Title: Circumvent the proliferation of counterfeited circulars using blockchain

Authors: H.L. Gururaj; Mohith C. Shekar; S. Priya; J. Shreyas; George Sebastian; M.N. Manu

Addresses: Department of IT, Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India ' Department of CS&E, Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering, Mysuru 570002, India ' Department of IT, Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India ' Department of IT, Manipal Institute of Technology Bengaluru, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India ' Department of CSE, Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering and Technology, Chittoor, India ' Department of ISE, SJBIT, Bengaluru, India

Abstract: Organisations issue circulars to declare the decision taken by them to the concerned people. However, in recent times, counterfeiting documents to spread fake information is increasing. In addition, such information is shared as scanned copies on the internet. This accelerates the growth of fake circulars at a rapid rate. Hence, it causes dilemma of whether to believe that the circular is genuine or not. To overcome this, this paper proposes the usage of blockchain technology, and smart contracts embed the digital signature into the document. The proposed approach uses the public key to provide a unique digital identity. It enables any user to sign the circulars using the public identifier, which in turn generates the signature parameters. Further, the documents are stored in decentralised peer-to-peer storage to make them highly accessible and tamper-proof. From the experimental results, it is stated that the proposed approach assures the originality of the document in a significant manner.

Keywords: digital signature; interplanetary file system; IPFS; blockchain; Ethereum; cryptography; EIP-712.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCCBS.2024.143205

International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems, 2024 Vol.11 No.3, pp.171 - 193

Received: 28 Dec 2023
Accepted: 19 Jun 2024
Published online: 09 Dec 2024 *

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