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N. Stifter, M. Eckhart, B. Brenner, E. Weippl:
""Avoiding Risky Designs When Using Blockchain Technologies in Cyber-Physical Systems"";
Talk: 24th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2019), Zaragoza, Spain; 2019-09-10 - 2019-09-13; in: "Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2019)", IEEE, (2019), ISBN: 978-1-7281-0304-4.

Blockchain has been hailed as an emerging technology with the potential to cause significant impact in a variety of
fields. One domain is an application in cyber-physical systems
(CPSs), e.g., as a building block for the (Industrial) Internet
of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0. In this regard, various use
cases and designs have been proposed that seek to leverage
the desirable properties blockchain technologies seem to offer.
While many of the principles behind blockchain have actually
been studied under the veil of Byzantine fault tolerance for
decades, some approaches, such as relying on game-theoretic
incentives and proof-of-work (PoW), are not yet fully understood. This knowledge gap can leave both practitioners and
researchers in a difficult position regarding a possible application
of such technologies, as it is often unclear what guarantees and
characteristics a particular blockchain design actually achieves.
This work-in-progress paper provides an overview of blockchain
security research, outlines system designs that are likely to exhibit
vulnerabilities, and provides examples of potentially insecure
proposals in the field of CPSs that employ such designs.

blockchain, security, cyber-physical systems