A Scrutiny Review of CPS 4.0-Based Blockchain With Quantum Resistance

Introduction

The world works with a lot of data collected on daily basis. The collection mechanisms of the data over the period of time have also became advance. The collection mechanisms are not only confined to numerical based data but also to multimedia data that is non-structured and documented type. The data collection is done using various modern-day sensors and attachments. This data requires lot feature engineering and a lot of expression can be given to it if utilized in a proper manner. Internet of Things (IoT) (Kumar S, 2019; Madakam S, 2015; Rehman H.u et al., 2017) and Cyber Physical System (CPS) (Aguida, 2020; Jazdi, 2014; Rawung et al.,2014) can be used for collection of the data in varied ways. IoT (Lakhwani et.al., 2020) systems are embedded and have many sensors that are connected through a micro-controller or micro-processor system that leverage the internet and cloud platform for connectivity. CPS also has many unit level sensors that work on physical level for collecting the data. This data is just collected form of information base from which knowledge can be extracted. The data collected from CPS/IoT can be used to perform many analytics and prognostication techniques for improving the state of the system. But this is not where the limitations are attained, another technology related to storing and management of data for better security and varied reasons is Blockchain (Nakamoto, 2009; Vujicic et.al.,2018). The intricate details will be explained in the further section of the article but in easy terminology the blockchain is a data storing mechanism that ensures transparency and decentralized system. Blockchain are heavily encrypted and give the security their top most priority. All the blocks are heavily encrypted with real-time hashes and connected with a strong link that use redundancy to ensure all the blocks are at the same operating state throughout the transactions and operations. This however will be tackled with the use of quantum computing (Bhatt et al,2019; Ladd et al,2010; Jazaeri et al,2019). The basis of current state-of-the-art systems fall less to break the blockchain because of the hash keys. These hash keys are not a challenge for quantum computer as it operates on quantum bits (qubits) which process many possibilities of one problem simultaneously. This is still a far-fetched problem as the number of qubits required to break the current state-of-the-art blockchain system is difficult but won’t be a problem in span of 10 years down the line. The quantum computers will easily be able to calculate the private key based on the public key in fraction of time which seems an impossible problem currently. Many suspicions are raised even before this has taken place that the quantum computers will replicate the hash performed and forge the transaction before the record is written on the block by replacing the hash. This process will be seamlessly easy yet many infractions are involved, but suspicion tingles the curiosity and it definitely has by forcing researchers to work with quantum resistant blockchain (Allende et al,2021; Ferna’ndez et al,2020; Zhang et al.,2021) that discusses some ideas to make current blockchain more secure and unbreakable. Although many aspects are involved that the cryptographical algorithms required will have to be rewritten for a quantum computer in such fashion which will for sure differ from traditional systems. The integration of blockchain into CPS 4.0 (Patel et al.,2022) industrial standard is another aspect for which this article discusses the idea in the further sections.