Show HN: LogSentinel, blockchain-inspired secure audit trail service | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: LogSentinel, blockchain-inspired secure audit trail service

logsentinel.com

18 pointsbozho16 comments

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have you all heard of Guardtime?

https://guardtime.com/cybersecurity-platform https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/834.pdf

They seem to be used by the GE predix platform and it looks very similar to the concepts in this thread.

https://www.predix.io/services/service.html?id=1881

that looks licensed from Ericsson which licensed Guardtime.. haha

they even go so far as to provide a specialized and hardened hardware device to signing operations at scale.

too bad its proprietary!!

https://guardtime.com/cybersecurity-platform

"Guaranteed integrity

The log cannot be tampered with without detection

Log integrity has been explored in computer science for years. We employ methods recommended by the crypto community, such as hash chaining and timestamping in order to guarantee the integrity of the logs"

so they just borrowed one aspect of bitcoin's innovation.

What else does Bitcoin have that is "innovative"? It's simply document timestamping service, and about the only thing that was new about it was decentralization.

yes, irrevocable timestamped database using proof of work algorithms

Irrevocability is implied by how cryptographic timestamping works in general, database is an implementation detail, and proof of work is not a benefit, but a (high) price to pay for lack of central coordination. I think you should tone down your admiration for blockchain.

That is true. That's why it's "blockchain-inspired". In the whitepaper there's an explanation why the distributed aspect / byzantine fault tolerance is not necessarily applicable in this case.

https://github.com/paragonie/chronicle

> Chronicle allows trusted clients to send data to be included in an immutable, auditable, cryptographic permanent record.

Very cool idea. Perhaps you could even push the logs into a real block chain...I think a few alt coins could facilitate that.

The website says that: Not only LogSentinel uses an approach and data structures similar to those of the blockchain, but we are also working on storing data in the Ethereum blockchain

How does that realistically work? Imagine hundreds of thousands of servers publishing their logs to a block chain, which has to be synced around the world and stored on the many thousands of participating computers.

Sounds like the very definition of a DDOS, or a new category of virus.

It only pushes the top of the chain every X hours, just creating "safe points". Not all data is pushed to the blockchain of course, it will be too expensive to begin with

I guess I don't understand. I thought the idea of a distributed ledger was everyone could confirm everything. Maybe my mistake is thinking distributed ledger and blockchain are the same thing?

It is practically the same thing, yes. But the use-case here is different - you don't need everyone to be able to confirm everything. You need to be sure that your data was not tampered with.

Seems like something that Siacoin might be better at.

This quite possibly the best use for blockchain that I have heard to date!

it is just a part of the blockchain, namely the "chain" :) But thanks

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