CICM: A Collaborative Integrity Checking Blockchain Consensus Mechanism for Preserving the Originality of Data the Cloud for Forensic Investigation

Abstract

The originality of data is very important for achieving correct results from forensic analysis of data for resolving the issue. Data may be analysed to resolve disputes or review issues by finding trends in the dataset that can give clues to the cause of the issue. Specially designed foolproof protection for data integrity is required for forensic purposes. Collaborative Integrity Checking Mechanism (CICM), for securing the chain-of-custody of data in a blockchain is proposed in this paper. Existing consensus mechanisms are fault-tolerant, allowing a threshold for faults. CICM avoids faults by using a transparent 100% agreement process for validating the originality of data in a blockchain. A group of agreement actors check and record the original status of data at its time of arrival. Acceptance is based on general agreement by all the participants in the consensus process. The solution was tested against practical byzantine fault tolerant (PBFT), Zyzzyva, and hybrid byzantine fault tolerant (hBFT) mechanisms for efficacy to yield correct results and operational performance costs. Binomial distribution was used to examine the CICM efficacy. CICM recorded zero probability of failure while the benchmarks recorded up to 8.44%. Throughput and latency were used to test its operational performance costs. The hBFT recorded the best performance among the benchmarks. CICM achieved 30.61% higher throughput and 21.47% lower latency than hBFT. In the robustness against faults tests, CICM performed better than hBFT with 16.5% higher throughput and 14.93% lower latency than the hBFT in the worst-case fault scenario.