BlockChain Security AddOn

What is a Blockchain?

The blockchain is a set of innovative technologies learned from Bitcoin that can be used in many systems.

One of the most interesting parts of Bitcoin is the “Bitcoin blockchain”, or simply “the blockchain”. The blockchain itself is nothing more than a shared data structure - a way to organize transactions in a particular way. Alongside the blockchain there is also a set of network protocols and application rules which solve a previously unsolved problem: the management of a shared transaction ledger among multiple computers that don’t know each other and, more importantly, don’t even trust each other. As such, you can think of the blockchain as a distributed database of sorts, except that the participants using the database don’t trust each other as far as altering the database is concerned.

This extension provides the ability to:

• manually create a SHA-256 hash from a text (Data to Hash)
• send a hash to the Tierion Hash API (Post Hash Item (Tierion))
• compare a hash to the one stored by Tierion (Recheck Receipt (Tierion))

To create a standard setup, do the following steps:

• create a new item using all data about it to create a SHA-256 hash
• store the hash online using the Blockchain AddOn
• anytime you want to use the item
  • create a SHA-256 hash using the same data
  • compare it with the one kept by Tierion
    • If the check was ok you can continue without worries
    • If the check returns a failed verification then your data has been compromised

For example, if we want to add more security to an online car shop, everytime a new product is added, a SHA-256 hash should be created from all important data like ProductID-Price-ManufactureDate-etc (ex: "192-3500-2007") (all data than is irrelevant-like description-should be ignored). This hash should then be posted to Tierion.

Now before accepting a payment for the car, all data should be checked. Create a SHA-256 from the same data ProductID-Price-ManufactureDate-etc. And verify it against the one stored by Tierion.

If the data is ok everything is fine and you should move forward with the sale.

If the data has been altered, someone might have changed the price in your database to 1200. The SHA-256 hash will now be created from "192-1200-2007" and this will be clearly different to the one kept by Tierion. In this case you should not go forward with the sale since you will lose 2300.

Using this setup you can make sure that your data has not been tempered with.