AN EVALUATION OF SECURITY IN BLOCKCHAIN-BASED SHARING OF STUDENT RECORDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

International Journal of Network Security & Its Applications (IJNSA) Vol.14, No.3, May 2022
DOI: 10.5121/ijnsa.2022.14301 1
AN EVALUATION OF SECURITY IN
BLOCKCHAIN-BASED SHARING OF STUDENT
RECORDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Timothy Arndt1
, Angela Guercio2
and Younghun Chae2
1
Department of Information Systems, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA
2
Department of Computer Science,
Kent State University at Stark, North Canton, OH, USA
ABSTRACT
Blockchain has recently taken off as a disruptive technology, from its initial use in cryptocurrencies to
wider applications in areas such as property registration and insurance due to its characteristic as a
distributed ledger which can remove the need for a trusted third party to facilitate transactions. This
spread of the technology to new application areas has been driven by the development of smart contracts –
blockchain-based protocols which can automatically enforce a contract by executing code based on the
logic expressed in the contract. One exciting area for blockchain is higher education. Students in higher
education are ever more mobile, and in an ever more agile world, the friction and delays caused by
multiple levels of administration in higher education can cause many anxieties and hardships for students
as well as potential employers who need to examine and evaluate student credentials. Distance learning as
a primary platform for higher education promises to open up higher education to a wider range of learners
than ever before. Blockchain-based storage of academic credentials is being widely studied due to the
advantages it can bring. As with any network-based system, blockchain comes with a number of security
and privacy concerns. Blockchain needs to meet several security-related requirements to be widely
accepted: decentralization; confidentiality; integrity; transparency; and immutability. Researchers have
been busy devising schemes to ensure that such requirements can be met in blockchain-based systems.
Several types of blockchain-specific attacks have been identified: 51% attacks; malicious contracts; spam
attacks; mining pools; targeted DDoS attacks; and others. Real-world attacks on blockchain-based systems
have been seen on cryptocurrency sites. In this paper, we will evaluate the specific privacy and security
concerns for blockchain-based systems used for academic credentials as well as suggested solutions. We
also examine the issues for academic credentials which are stored “off-chain” in such systems (as is often
the case). In this case, a Distributed File System (DFS) implemented with a peer-to-peer (P2P)
architecture is often the choice for the storage of the academic credentials since it matches the
decentralized nature of blockchain. Blockchain then contributes much to the usefulness of such a DFS,
making it in turn a good match for a P2P DFS such as IPFS.
KEYWORDS
Blockchain, Mobile Education, Higher Education, Privacy, Security
1. INTRODUCTION
The blockchain idea was introduced in a paper published by Satoshi Nakamoto [1] and deployed
in the bitcoin cryptocurrency the following year. Blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that
can efficiently record transactions between two parties in a verifiable and immutable (permanent)
fashion without the need for a trusted third party (disintermediation).

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Bitcoin employs a peer-to-peer architecture and relies on proof-of-work, a piece of data time
consuming and computationally complex to produce, but which is easy for others to verify (via
“miners” who are rewarded with bitcoin for this computational work) and which satisfies certain
requirements as a consensus mechanism. Consensus mechanisms allow for the correctness or
“truth” of a transaction to be confirmed (depending on a set of rules) when multiple distributed
actors perform transactions, and some of those actors may be untrustworthy. Subsequent
developments have allowed blockchain to be programmed (via smart contracts) to trigger
transactions automatically [2]. Transactions can cause code implementing rules which are stored
on the blockchain to be run, through these smart contracts blockchain can lead to what have been
called Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs).
As a foundational technology, blockchain has been used or proposed in many application areas
besides cryptocurrencies [3] including the banking sector [4], land registration (especially in
developing countries) [5], the insurance sector [6], and electronic voting [7]. Alternative
consensus mechanisms (such as proof of stake and mechanisms based on Byzantine Fault
Tolerance) have been developed as well as alternative architectures (e.g., client-server).
Higher education academic records are typically stored and managed by academic institutions in
a centralized manner. This leads to problems when students are highly mobile, attending several
institutions. They must collect credentials from each institution. Also, when students transfer
from one institution to another, their credentials must be evaluated manually. This is both slow
and expensive. Blockchain has been suggested as a solution for these and other problems arising
from centralized control of academic records in higher education.
In this paper, we will evaluate the specific privacy and security concerns for blockchain-based
systems used for academic credentials as well as suggested solutions. For further study on
blockchain in higher education, [8], [9] (related works section of this work), and [10] will be
helpful. We also evaluate the issues for academic credentials which are stored “off-chain” in such
systems (as is often the case).
The organization of the rest of the paper is as follows. In section 2, we give a brief overview of
blockchain in higher education. Section 3 looks at blockchain security issues and how they affect
the higher education domain. Section 4 examines the combination of blockchain and distributed
file systems, which will likely be widely used in the domain being studied, while section 5 gives
a concluding discussion.
2. BLOCKCHAIN IN HIGHER EDUCATION
In this section we will take a brief look at a few representative projects in the application of
blockchain technology in the area of higher education.
Blockchain in higher education promises solutions to critical problems in the area. For example,
the problem of fraudulent academic documentation. Blockchain should be able to be used to
secure and verify academic documentation, without requiring a user to have access to an
institution’s record keeping system [11]. This provides a quick and easy way to identify
fraudulent academic documentation. Blockchain also enables automated mutual verification of
academic records (transcripts, etc.) by academic institutions, avoiding the need for manual
verification, by supporting the development of a standard representation of those academic
records, outside the control of any centralized authority (due to the decentralized nature of
blockchain). The importance of blockchain in higher education can be seen by noting that
blockchain provides self-sovereignty, trust, transparency and provenance, immutability,
disintermediation, and collaboration [12]. Student learning materials, such as exams and

3
programming assignments, can also be stored on the blockchain in a secure (encrypted and
immutable) fashion.
A number of researchers have explored the use of blockchain to store university grades, i.e.,
university transcripts. A group at the University of Glasgow has developed a functional prototype
for storage of student grades at the institution [13]. The platform chosen was Ethereum, hence it
was built on a public blockchain. Based upon an exploratory, qualitative evaluation the authors
found several tensions between the concepts of a university as an organization and of distributed
autonomous organizations (DAOs) in Ethereum. Another project with a prototype
implementation is [14], where a private BigChainDB blockchain is used for storage of student
transcripts (not grades within a course as in the previously described research, though). Initial
results were reported to be promising. Mahamatov et al.[15] describe a prototype implementation
of a university transcript system using an Ethereum private blockchain and ERC-20 tokens (a
standard for tokens, which are needed to carry out smart contracts, on Ethereum) on that
blockchain. Students are able to read their grades, while professors and administrative personnel
can record grades.
EduCTX [16] is an ambitious project for the development of a higher education credit platform
based on the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), a framework approved
by the EU. The decentralized higher education credit and grading system can offer a globally
unified viewpoint for students, higher education institutions, and other potential stakeholders
such as prospective employers. A prototype implementation has been built on the ARK
blockchain platform [17]. ARK is a public blockchain, but the authors transformed it into a
private (permissioned) one by taking advantage of the flexible nature of ARK to change the
parameters of the DPoS (delegate proof of stake) consensus algorithm used. Logic to ensure the
validity of transactions on the blockchain has been defined. ECTX tokens represent credits that
students gain for completing courses (analogous to the way that ERC-20 tokens are used in [15]).
The authors will use the prototype system firstly at their home institution, the University of
Maribor, and then at a select set of institutions of higher education. They anticipate that this or a
similar system could potentially evolve into a unified, simplified, globally ubiquitous higher
education credit and grading system.
A more theoretical investigation is given by [18] in which the architecture for the Disciplina
platform for student records is described and an analysis of the main issues arising from storing
student records in a blockchain is given. Their platform incorporates both private blockchains
(maintained by individual institutions of higher learning) and public blockchains, managed by
“Witnesses” who witness the fact that a private block was produced by a valid institution. A
good, theoretical discussion of the problems of privacy, provability, and data disclosure in this
context is given.
Besides traditional transcripts, blockchain is also being used or proposed for various alternative
types of educational credentials. Blockchain enables permanent authentication and storage for a
myriad of alternative credentials made up of diverse micro credentials, nano degrees, MOOCs,
and certificates/badges from various types of training programmes. These credentials can then be
directly controlled and managed by users [19].
Among the most well-known of higher education blockchain projects was that at MIT’s Media
Lab which created blockcerts, a mobile app for educational credentialing built on Bitcoin [20]. At
the Open University, researchers have developed the OpenLearn system built on the Ethereum
public blockchain which awards OpenLearn badges for completing sections of a course and
passing assessments [21]. The creators of that system have also developed a blockchain project to
create a permanent distributed record of intellectual effort and associated reputational reward that

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instantiates and democratises educational reputation beyond the academic community.
Blockchain for Education [22] is another prototype system supporting the storage, retrieval, and
verification of certificates via blockchain technology. Certificates are an important means of
proving lifelong learning achievement in today’s environment, however they are susceptible to
forgery. Blockchain helps to solve this problem. The prototype system uses Ethereum and its
smart contracts to manage identities of registered certificate authorities and the hashes of
certificates which are stored in a separate, centralized document management system, while the
profile information of certificate authorities is stored using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
distributed file system. Storing data off the blockchain allows it to be deleted as is required, for
example, by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for personal information.
Other uses of blockchain in higher education have also been contemplated, including motivation,
assessment, advising, etc. [23]. A prototype system for a blockchain based learning analytics
platform built on Ethereum has been proposed as well [24].
3. SECURITY AND PRIVACY ISSUES IN BLOCKCHAIN
A number of different types of security problems have been noted in blockchain. In this section,
we survey a few of these and how they relate to blockchain in education.
3.1. 51% Attacks
Blockchain relies on a distributed consensus mechanism such as proof of work (PoW) to
establish trust. Unfortunately, the consensus mechanism is itself vulnerable to a 51% attack. This
occurs when a single malicious miner or mining pools controls more than 50% of the total
hashing power of the entire blockchain [25]. The malicious miner who controls this much
hashing power has basically unlimited power to manipulate and modify the blockchain
information including reversing transactions, changing the ordering of transactions and blocking
transactions from being verified. A mining pool for the Bitcoin blockchain at one time reached
42% of hashing power before miners dropped out of the pool in order to stop a 51% attack from
becoming possible [26]. In larger networks, achieving 51% of hashing power is quite difficult
and expensive, but in smaller networks it is possible. For example, one of the Bitcoin forks,
Bitcoin Gold, was the victim of such an attack in 2018 and then again in 2020.
51% attacks require a large investment in computing power and coordination in order to be
carried out. While the effort might be worthwhile for the monetary gain associated with
blockchains used for cryptocurrencies, for large public blockchains the effort will probably not be
worthwhile for the advantages to be gained by manipulating educational credentials, unless some
group wants to corrupt all of the credentials for an institution (for example), not just those of a
single student. It is not to be discounted, though, that such corruption could occur as collateral
damage from a 51% attack aimed at some other, more remunerative target.
3.2. Malicious Contracts
Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform and
operating system featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality [27]. Smart contracts are
effectively programs that are stored in blocks on the blockchain. Predetermined conditions
control when these programs are executed. A typical use is the automation of the execution of a
contract involving multiple parties. All parties to the contract are immediately aware of the
outcome of the contract without the need for an intermediary. Another use of smart contracts is
the automation of a workflow where the next action in the workflow is triggered when certain
conditions are met. Users of the Ethereum platform are ‘pseudo-anonymous’ and a single user

5
can have multiple accounts under multiple cryptographic identities. It has been shown [28] how
‘criminal smart contracts’ can facilitate leakage of confidential information, theft of
cryptographic keys, and various real-world crimes. Atzei et al. [29], have presented a taxonomy
of vulnerabilities of smart contracts in Ethereum including such vulnerabilities as stack overflow,
exception disorder and unpredictable state. Various countermeasures to these malicious contracts
have been proposed, including malicious contract detection using supervised learning [27].
For higher education blockchain, likely the most serious threat from this type of attack is the
leaking of private credentials. However, it is also possible that a malicious contract exploiting the
vulnerabilities identified above might falsely update a student’s credentials, corrupting them.
3.3. Sybil Attacks
In a Sybil attack, a single adversary controls many nodes in a system by creating numerous fake
identities in order to gain a disproportionately large influence, thus subverting a reputation
system[30].The vulnerability of the reputation system to Sybil attacks depends on the ease with
which identities can be generated, the openness of the reputation system to inputs from entities
without a chain of trust linking them to a trusted authority, and finally whether the reputation
system treats all entities identically. The adversary in a Sybil attack presents multiple identities to
a P2P network in order to effectively control multiple nodes in the network, thus achieving a
disproportionate level of control over the network. A defense against Sybil attacks can rely on
validated identities issued by a trusted authority. The requirements for agents to present a trusted
identity conflicts with the need for permission less open membership, though. Anonymity is also
lost. Anonymity can be preserved by alternative defenses against Sybil attacks such as social trust
graphs or by imposing economic costs as artificial barriers to entry. Proof of work, such as
required in some blockchains is an example of this approach. An example of a blockchain
development to defeat Sybil attacks is TrustChain [31] which includes a novel Sybil-resistant
algorithm NetFlow to determine the trustworthiness of agents in an online community.
3.4. Eclipse Attacks
While a Sybil attack affects the whole network, in an Eclipse attack the attacker targets a
particular user (or node). The attacker attempts to prevent the victim from having a true picture of
network activity and the current ledger state. The attacker effectively duplicates the network for
the attacker, presenting this fake network to the victim instead of the real network. This is made
possible since in a decentralized network like blockchain, a node does not connect to all other
nodes on the network simultaneously – instead it is limited to a small, select group of nodes, who
in turn are in contact with others. The attacking node controls a botnet of host nodes and needs to
ascertain the select set of nodes that the victim is currently neighbor with (able to directly
communicate with). An Eclipse attack will allow the attacker to monopolize all of the victim’s
connections – both incoming and outgoing [32]. This will isolate the victim from other users on
the network. The attacker is able to filter the victim’s view of the blockchain or to cause the
victim to waste computing power on obsolete views of the blockchain. The attacker is also able to
use the victim’s computing power to conduct its own malicious acts. In the context of education
blockchain, a student might prevent a potential employer from having a complete view of all of
the student’s credentials.
4. BLOCKCHAIN AND DISTRIBUTED FILE SYSTEMS
One of the drawbacks of using blockchain to store academic records is the relatively high cost of
storing data on the blockchain. In order to gain the previously discussed benefits of blockchain

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while being able to store large amounts of data, researchers in various domains have
recommended that in the use of blockchain, the large amount of data required by the domain be
stored off-chain, while the blockchain itself is used to provide authentication mechanism for
access to the data [34]. Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain, it is natural to match the
blockchain with a similar file system – namely, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) distributed file systems (DFS)
[35].
Given to the aforementioned high cost of storing data on the blockchain, it is likely that
educational transcripts themselves will be stored off the blockchain, with only the credentials
needed to access and verify them being stored on the blockchain. One popular mode of storing
data off the blockchain is to use the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS is a peer-to-peer
distributed file system, so its architecture and management style are a good match for blockchain-
based systems.
The IPFS is both a protocol and a P2P network for storage and sharing of data in a distributed file
system. User-operators of IPFS hold a portion of the complete data, rather than having all of the
data at a central repository. IPFS uses content-addressing. Each file is uniquely identified in a
global namespace. A user can serve a file by content address and other users can find and retrieve
that content from a user who has it (there will likely be multiple replicas of that content in the
system) through the use of a distributed hash table.
Blockchain has been used together with IPFS in the Filecoin [36] system which is a cooperative
digital storage and retrieval method. Blockchain makes up for some of the deficiencies of P2P
DFS, namely, it supports the verification of publishers and the credibility of the downloaded
content, and it provides an incentive mechanism so that the nodes taking part in the P2P network
which store the files are rewarded for sharing their bandwidth and storage resources which lead to
increased file availability and robustness. In a traditional web-based environment, Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used to access data. In the blockchain/IPFS combinations, the IPFS
protocol with its secured hashing is used which provides security and privacy.
For examples of the combination of blockchain and IPFS, see [33], [34] for the use in storage of
electronic medical records, and [40] for the use in the automotive insurance sector.
Other popular blockchain-based distributed file systems include Swarm [37], Storj [38], and
PPIO [39].
In terms of security, the Sybil and Eclipse attacks previously mentioned can also apply to these
P2P DFSs. Other specific attacks, such (D)DoS have also been noted.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Blockchain has been increasingly accepted in higher education as an alternative for the storage of
academic records. A systematic literature review [10] shows that interest is continuing to grow,
with the peak of interest occurring in the last complete year surveyed - 2020. The main advantage
of blockchain in this context is that the records are not under the control of several institutions or
of a centralized third party.
The current approach has each academic institution maintaining its own records, and students
having to collect records from each institution they attended in order to present them to
prospective employers. This system is both slow and costly (for students – institutions may make
money by charging for the release of academic records). Blockchain solves the problem of speed
(in addition to taking the records out of the hands of the institutions, as noted above). Some cost

7
is associated with blockchain, however, much of that cost can be borne by prospective employers
who carry out transactions on the blockchain in order to have access to academic records.
Another important application in this area where blockchain can help out is in the evaluation of
academic credentials when students transfer from one academic institution to another. Currently,
the academic records must be evaluated manually, a process which is both slow and expensive.
With blockchain, the whole process can be automated, perhaps employing the use of smart
contracts, making the process much more efficient.
An alternative approach could be to have a trusted third party hold all of the academic records,
but then we still have the problem of trust. Not all countries have an institution worthy of trust,
and even in those that do, not all students may trust them (no universally trusted institution).
Blockchain does not require a trusted third party, so it solves this problem.
As was seen in the descriptions of the types of attacks in the previous section, many of the attack
strategies require obtaining large amounts of computing power to be effective. Such an attack
may be considered worthwhile in the cryptocurrency application of blockchain, but in the
education sector, no such financial incentive is apparent for attacks on a single student’s
credentials. Possibly the blackmailing of a large institution poses more of a threat, though given
the higher payoffs available to criminals in other blockchain areas, that is still rather farfetched.
The threats associated with malicious contracts seem to be more of concern in educational
blockchain, since they may corrupt educational credentials.
It should be made clear that though this paper has examined various security issues related to the
use of blockchain for the storage and exchange of higher education student academic credentials,
such a system is still generally better than the centralized alternatives. Blockchain technology
secures and authenticates transactions and data through the use of cryptography. The immutable
nature of blockchain prevents the deletion of or tampering with the academic records.
In any case, it will be necessary for users of blockchain-based educational credential systems to
keep up to date with the latest security issues in the blockchain area in order to guard against
attacks, since those attacks, and the defences against them, are continuously evolving.
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AUTHORS
Timothy Arndt is Chair and Professor of the Department of Information Systems,
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Director of Business
Analytics at Cleveland State University. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of Pittsburgh. He is the editor of several journals and has been involved in the
organization of several international conferences. His research interests include database
systems, software engineering, e-learning, and blockchain.
Angela Guercio is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Kent
State University. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Kent State University, a
M.S. in Computer and Information Sciences from the Knowledge Systems Institute, IL,
and the Laurea degree in Computer Science “cum laude” from the University of Salerno,
Italy. She has previously been an assistant professor at Hiram College, OH, adjunct
research visiting professor at Lamar University, TX, and a senior research associate at the
University of Salerno, Italy. She has been involved in the organization of several conferences and is the
editor of several journals. Her research interests include e-learning, software engineering, multimedia
languages, and blockchain.
Younghun Chae is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Computer Science at
Kent State University and resides at the Stark campus. He received both his M.S. and
Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island. His research interests include trust
management, data analysis, and cyber security. He has worked with the Digital Forensics
and Cyber Security Center at the University of Rhode Island since 2010. He is now
director of the Cyber security and Intelligence Analytics Lab at Kent State University at
Stark.

AN EVALUATION OF SECURITY IN BLOCKCHAIN-BASED SHARING OF STUDENT RECORDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

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