Decentralized Trusted Timestamping

This page gives an overview of my group’s research on Decentralized Trusted Timestamping (DTT).
The concept of DTT on the Blockchain, e.g. using Bitcoin’s Blockchain, has various practical use cases. Some use cases presented here include:

• securely tracing the origin of ideas (independent of the platform used for distributing an idea)
• preserving digital cultural heritage (e.g. documenting and visualizing changes to online news)
• securing the integrity of video (e.g. to prove that a dashcam recording was not tampered with after the time of an accident)

 

Enabling the Traceability of Ideas Shared Online using Decentralized Trusted Timestamping

The external resources described in the paper “VirtualPatent – Enabling the Traceability of Ideas Shared Online using Decentralized Trusted Timestamping” (currently in review) will be linked here.

System Demo

• http://virtualpatent.com

GitHub Project & Documentation

• The source code and technical documentation of the system is available on GitHub: (to be released)

---

Using the Blockchain of Cryptocurrencies for Timestamping Digital Cultural Heritage

Online news texts are regularly updated and modified. Currently, readers have no convenient and no trusted means available for comparing the changes that occur in news articles over time.  In this paper, we show how decentralized trusted timestamping (DTT) of online news articles at scheduled intervals can be used to secure ‘snapshots’ of the news and visualize these to the reader. The developed system allows users to specify which URLs to monitor for changes and visualizes these changes as a simple-to-understand color-coded diff. For details on the system, refer to the following bibliographic information:

• B. Gipp, N. Meuschke, and C. Breitinger, “Using the Blockchain of Cryptocurrencies for Timestamping Digital Cultural Heritage,” in Proceedings of the Workshop on Web Archiving and Digital Libraries (WADL) held in conjunction with the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), 2016.

Abstract

The proportion of information that is exclusively available online is continuously increasing. Unlike physical print media, online news outlets, magazines, or blogs are not immune to retrospective modification. Even significant editing of text in online news sources can easily go unnoticed. This poses a challenge to the preservation of digital cultural heritage. It is nearly impossible for regular readers to verify whether the textual content they encounter online has at one point been modified from its initial state, and at what time or to what extent the text was modified to its current version. In this paper, we propose a web-based platform that allows users to submit the URL for any web content they wish to track for changes. The system automatically creates a trusted timestamp stored in the blockchain of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin for the hash of the HTML content available at the user-specified URL. By using trusted timestamping to secure a ‘snapshot’ of online information as it existed at a specific time, any subsequent changes made to the content can be identified.

Try out the system for yourself at: www.stamptheweb.org

System Overview

Submit an article URL for timestamping and tracking changes:  

Search or browse all articles for which trusted timestamps have been created. The snapshot of the timestamped news articles can be downloaded as PDF or PNG. 

Comparison view
Diff comparing the first-released version of an online article published in the New York Times, with modifications made a few hours later.
The excerpt is from the NYT article “Tension Rising, Saudi Monarch Ousts Ministers” initially published on May 8th, 2016.

---

 

Securing Video Integrity using Decentralized Trusted Timestamping on the Bitcoin Blockchain

This page provides the supplementary resources described in the paper “Securing Video Integrity Using Decentralized Trusted Timestamping on the Blockchain“. To access the paper, refer to the following bibliographic information:

• B. Gipp, K. Jagrut, and C. Breitinger, “Securing Video Integrity Using Decentralized Trusted Timestamping on the Blockchain” in Proceedings of the 10th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), Paphos, Cyprus, 2016.

Abstract

The ability to verify the integrity of video files is important for consumer and business applications alike. Especially if video files are to be used as evidence in court, the ability to prove that a file existed in a certain state at a specific time and was not altered since is crucial. This paper proposes the use of blockchain technology to secure and verify the integrity of video files. To demonstrate a specific use case for this concept, we present an application that converts a video camera enabled smartphone into a cost-effective tamper-proof dashboard camera (dash cam). If the phone’s built-in sensors detect a collision, the application automatically creates a hash of the relevant video recording. This video file’s hash is immediately transmitted to the OriginStamp service, which includes the hash in a transaction made to the Bitcoin network. Once the Bitcoin network confirms the transaction, the video file’s hash is permanently secured in the tamperproof decentralized public ledger that is the blockchain. Any subsequent attempt to manipulate the video is futile, because the hash of the manipulated footage will not match the hash that was secured in the blockchain. Using this approach, the integrity of video evidence cannot be contested. The footage of dashboard cameras could become a valid form of evidence in court. In the future, the approach could be extended to automatically secure the integrity of digitally recorded data in other scenarios, including: surveillance systems, drone footage, body cameras of law enforcement, log data from industrial machines, measurements recorded by lab equipment, and the activities of weapon systems.

Actions of the developed dash cam application in the case of a collision:

Related Research

• B. Gipp, N. Meuschke, and A. Gernandt, “Decentralized Trusted Timestamping using the Crypto Currency Bitcoin,” inProceedings of the iConference 2015, Newport Beach, California, 2015.
  [Bibtex]

 

GitHub Project & APK file

The source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/jagrutkosti/dashit 

The Android application package (APK) file can be downloaded from: https://goo.gl/McIfE8

Application preview:

 

Related Links

• OriginStamp – a web service that implements trusted timestamping on the Bitcoin blockchain.
• Also refer to the OriginStamp API if you are interested in integrating a secure decentralized timestamping functionality into your own application.