TITLE:
Authoritative and Unbiased Responses to Geographic Queries
AUTHORS:
Mahalingam Ramkumar, Naresh Adhikari
KEYWORDS:
Authenticated Data Structures, Blockchain Ledger, Geographic Information Systems
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Information Security,
Vol.13 No.3,
June
30,
2022
ABSTRACT: A
protocol for processing geographic data is proposed to guarantee authoritative
and unbiased responses to geographic queries, without the need to rely on
trusted third parties. The integrity of the proposed authoritative and unbiased
geographic services (AUGS) protocol is guaranteed by employing novel hash tree
based authenticated data structures (ADS) in conjunction with a blockchain
ledger. Hash tree based ADSes are used to incrementally compute a succinct
dynamic commitments to AUGS data. A blockchain ledger is used to record 1) transactions that
trigger updates to AUGS data, and 2) the updated cryptographic commitments to AUGS data. Untrusted service
providers are required to provide verification objects (VOs) as
proof-of-correctness of their responses to AUGS queries. Anyone with access to
commitments in ledger entries can verify the proof.