NFC-Blockchain Based COVID-19 Immunity Certificate: Proposed System and Emerging Issues

Fredrick Ishengoma

Abstract


Vaccine requirements are becoming more mandatory in several countries as public health experts and governments become more concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic and its variants. In the meantime, as the number of vaccine requirements grows, so does the counterfeiting of vaccination documents. Fake vaccination certificates are steadily growing, being sold online and on the dark web. Due to the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need of robust authentication mechanisms that support touch-less technologies like Near Field Communication (NFC). Thus, in this paper, a blockchain-NFC based COVID-19 Digital Immunity Certificate (DIC) system is proposed. The vaccination data are first encrypted by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm on Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and then uploaded to the blockchain. The proposed system is based on the amalgamation of NCF and blockchain technologies which can mitigate the issue of fake vaccination certificates. Furthermore, the emerging issues of employing the proposed system are discussed with future directions.


Keywords:
Blockchain technology; COVID-19; Digital Immunity Certificate; HDFS; NFC

Full Text:

 PDF

References


W. R. Erdelen and J. G. Richardson, “A world after COVID-19: Business as usual, or building bolder and better?” Global Policy, vol. 12, pp.157–166, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12904

A. L Phelan, “COVID-19 immunity passports and vaccination certificates: scientific, equitable, and legal challenges,” Lancet, vol. 395, pp. 1595–1598, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31034-5

T. Porat, R. Burnell, R. A. Calvo, E. Ford, P. Paudyal, W. L Baxter, and A. Parush. “Vaccine passports may backfire: Findings from a cross-sectional study in the UK and Israel on Willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19,” Vaccines, vol. 9(8), no. 902, Aug. 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9080902

E-Estonia. The almighty QR code easing our travels. [Online]. Available: https://e-estonia.com/the-digital-green-certificate/ [Accessed: June 2021].

I. E Agbehadji, B. O. Awuzie, and A. B Ngowi, “COVID-19 pandemic waves: 4IR technology utilisation in multi-sector economy,” Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 18, p. 10168, Sept. 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131810168

S. Xie and H. Z. Tan, “An anti-counterfeiting architecture for traceability system based on modified two-level quick response codes,” Electronics, vol. 10, no. 20, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10030320

D. Kirilova, N. Maslov, and A. Reyn, “Blockchain as a new technology for development,” International Journal of Open Information Technologies, vol. 7, no.1, 2021.

M. M. Pryanikov and A. V. Chugunov, “Blockchain as the communication basis for the digital economy development: Advantages and problems,” International Journal of Open Information Technologies, vol. 5, no. 6, 2017.

V. Coskun, B. Ozdenizci, and K. Ok. “The survey on near field communication,” Sensors, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 13348–13405, 2015. https://doi.org/10.3390/s150613348

P. Danny and C. Massimo, “NFC-based traceability in the food chain,” Sustainability, vol. 9, no. 10, p. 1910, Oct. 2017. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9101910

K. Fan, C. Zhang, K. Yang, H. Li, and Y. Yang, “Lightweight NFC protocol for privacy protection in mobile IoT,” Applied Sciences, vol. 8, no. 12, p. 2506, Dec. 2018. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8122506

C. Vedat, O. Kose, and O. Kerem.“A survey on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology”. Wireless personal communications vol. 71, no.3, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-012-0935-5.

D. Silva-Pedroza, R. Marin-Calero, and G. Ramirez-Gonzalez, “NFC evaluation in the development of mobile applications for MICE in tourism”, Sustainability, vol. 9, no. 11, p. 1937, Oct. 2017. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9111937

C. Thammarat, “Efficient and secure NFC authentication for mobile payment ensuring fair exchange protocol,” Symmetry, vol. 12, no. 10, p. 1649, Oct. 2020. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym12101649

S. Olenik, H. S. Lee and F. Güder, “The future of near-field communication-based wireless sensing,” Nature Reviews Materials, vol. 6, pp. 286–288, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00299-8

G. Chen, B. Xu, M. Lu, and N.-S. Chen, “Exploring blockchain technology and its potential applications for education”. Smart Learning Environments, vol. 5, no. 1, Jan. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-017-0050-x

L. Liu, W. Zhang, and C. Han, “A survey for the application of blockchain technology in the media,” Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl., vol.14, pp. 3143–3165, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-021-01168-5

H. T. M Gamage, H. D. Weerasinghe, and N. G. J Dias, “A survey on blockchain technology concepts, applications, and issues,” SN Computer Science, vol. 1, no. 114, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-020-00123-0

N. P Krylova and E. N. Levashov, “The prospects of the blockchain technology in the information society,” Autom. Doc. Math. Linguist., vol. 55, pp. 8–16, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0005105521010052

A. Khatoon, “A blockchain-based smart contract system for healthcare management”, Electronics, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 94, Jan. 2020. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9010094

A. B. Haque, B. Naqvi, A. K. M. N. Islam, and S. Hyrynsalmi, “Towards a GDPR-compliant blockchain-based COVID vaccination passport,” Applied Science, vol. 11, no. 13, p. 6132, Jul. 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11136132

H. R. Hasan et al., “Blockchain-based solution for COVID-19 digital medical passports and immunity certificates,” in IEEE Access, vol. 8, 2020, pp. 222093–222108.https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3043350

K. Christodoulou, P. Christodoulou, Z. Zinonos, E. G. Carayannis, and S. A. Chatzichristofis, “Health information exchange with blockchain amid Covid-19-like pandemics,” in 16th International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS), 2020, pp. 412-417. https://doi.org/10.1109/DCOSS49796.2020.00071

Y. Zhang, Y. Liu, and C. Chi, “BID-HCP: blockchain identifier based health certificate passport system,” in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12653, Cyberspace Safety and Security, Cheng J., Tang X., Liu X. (eds). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73671-2_18

A. S. Anjum, “A blockchain-based approach to prevent hidden contagion of Covid-19,” Compiler, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 71–84, 2020. https://doi.org/10.28989/compiler.v9i2.787

J. Thatcher, R. Wright, H. Sun, T. Zagenczyk, and R. Klein, “Mindfulness in information technology use: Definitions, distinctions, and a new measure,” MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems, vol. 42, pp. 831–847, 2018. https://doi.org/10.25300/misq/2018/11881

S. S.Hasan, N. H.Sultan, and F. A. Barbhuiya, “Cloud data provenance using IPFS and blockchain technology,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Security in Cloud Computing, Auckland, New Zealand, 7–12 July 2019, pp. 5–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3327962.3331457




DOI: 10.7250/itms-2021-0004

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2021 Fredrick Ishengoma

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.