Achieving Anonymous and Covert Reporting on Public Blockchain Networks

Liehuang Zhu, Jiaqi Zhang, Can Zhang, Feng Gao, Zhuo Chen and Zhen Li ()
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Liehuang Zhu: School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Jiaqi Zhang: School of Computer Science & Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Can Zhang: School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Feng Gao: School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Zhuo Chen: School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
Zhen Li: School of Computer Science & Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

Mathematics, 2023, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-20

Abstract: Reporting helps to combat illegal activities and deters lawbreakers and potential lawbreakers. From ancient times to the present, public authorities have usually rewarded effective reporting information to build harmonious societies. In this process, protecting the privacy of the whistleblower is a very important issue. Existing blockchain-based anonymous reporting solutions help solve the problem of insufficient anonymity in traditional reporting solutions, but they do not address the issue of hiding the reporting behavior. The disclosure of reporting behavior may alert offenders in advance and negatively impact case handling. This paper proposes an anonymous and covert reporting scheme and rewarding mechanism based on blockchain, which realizes the covertness of the reporting behavior while protecting the privacy of the whistleblower. The proposed scheme uses ring signature and derived address technology to ensure anonymity and achieves covertness by embedding information in the ring signature based on the idea of covert communication. Theoretical analysis proves that the proposed scheme has covertness, anonymity, and unforgeability properties. Experiments show that the proposed scheme takes only 0.08 s to upload data and 0.07 s to verify while achieving covertness.

Keywords: blockchain network; covert communication; anonymous reporting; ring signature; information embedding; smart contract (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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