Distributed Digital Artifacts on the Semantic Web

International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research
Volume 5– Issue 2, 99 - 103, 2016, ISSN:- 2319–8656
www.ijcat.com 99
Distributed Digital Artifacts on the Semantic Web
Susan P Kurian
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Mangalam college of Engineering
Kottayam, India
Vishnu S Sekhar
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Mangalam college of Engineering
Kottayam, India
Abstract: Distributed digital artifacts incorporate cryptographic hash values to URI called trusty URIs in a distributed environment
building good in quality, verifiable and unchangeable web resources to prevent the rising man in the middle attack. The greatest
challenge of a centralized system is that it gives users no possibility to check whether data have been modified and the communication
is limited to a single server. As a solution for this, is the distributed digital artifact system, where resources are distributed among
different domains to enable inter-domain communication. Due to the emerging developments in web, attacks have increased rapidly,
among which man in the middle attack (MIMA) is a serious issue, where user security is at its threat. This work tries to prevent MIMA
to an extent, by providing self reference and trusty URIs even when presented in a distributed environment. Any manipulation to the
data is efficiently identified and any further access to that data is blocked by informing user that the uniform location has been
changed. System uses self-reference to contain trusty URI for each resource, lineage algorithm for generating seed and SHA-512 hash
generation algorithm to ensure security. It is implemented on the semantic web, which is an extension to the world wide web, using
RDF (Resource Description Framework) to identify the resource. Hence the framework was developed to overcome existing
challenges by making the digital artifacts on the semantic web distributed to enable communication between different domains across
the network securely and thereby preventing MIMA.
Keywords: Digital artifacts, man in the middle attack(MIMA), semantic web, RDF, trusty URI.
1. INTRODUCTION
With the ascend of credit cards, contactless payments &
crypto currencies people have been predicting the end for
physical money for nearly 60 years. Over the past decades,
researchers have confirmed that there is only 9% of physical
money with men and the rest is invested via internet, as
technology has made work easier, which can be done from
anywhere at any time. And here comes the relevance of this
system to provide security for data in web, which is one
among the greatest challenges currently raised. The solution
for this is the distributed digital artifact system, which
prevents the relevant man in the middle attack to an extent by
ensuring verifiability and reliability.
The system consists of a coordinator process, to manage the
domain which is assumed to be trusted. Seed generator is used
to connect server in a domain which want to part of the
semantic web publication, through which index of reference
tree is built in multiple domain. Hash value will be calculated
and Base 64 encoding is done. It is then published on the
interface once the RDF encoding has been generated. On
users request for service at the server, the server in turn
connect to other server which has the required resource and
the document is delivered to the client if the right access is
satisfied followed by Base 64 decoding.
The rapid development of online payments, e-commerce sites,
netbanking etc. made human work much easier, where they
can do everything sitting at home on a button click. Due to
these emerging developments website attacks have increased
rapidly, where user security is at its threat. Among websites
attacks man in the middle attack (MIMA) is a serious issue,
where a malicious actor places himself into a conversation
between 2 parties to access the information that they have
send to each other. This work tries to prevent MIMA to an
extent, by providing self reference and trusty URIs even when
presented in a distributed environment. Any manipulation to
the data is efficiently identified and any further access to that
data is blocked by informing user that the uniform location
has been changed.
Fig.1 Man In the Middle Attack
2. RELATED WORKS
Lots of research are going on in the task of making digital
artifacts on the web verifiable and reliable[1], [3], [5] ,[6]. In
[1] authors suggest a module wise approach to make
documents on the web correct, unmodified and always made
available. The system makes use of trusty URIs[2] including
hash values to identify modified input, which returns a totally
changed value, even when slightly changed.
Nymble [2] is a system in which servers blacklist
misbehaving users and blocks them. Websites use a seed for
each nymble for blacklisting users, which in turn links future

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nymbles from same user. It’s a comprehensive credential
system which maintains the privacy of blacklisted users.
Tobias Kuhn and Michel Dumontier in [3], a mechanism to
incorporate cryptographic hash values in URIs was proposed .
It was used to make the entire reference trees verifiable. The
modular architecture used improves reliability and efficiency
of tools.
Semantic web security and privacy system [4] deals with
policy based security and privacy management on the
Semantic Web. It supports protecting sensitive resources and
information revelation. It describes policy, their interactions,
specification, conflict detection and validation.
In [5] a decentralized approach to circulate, access and storing
of data is considered. It propose a web based bottom-up
process allowing researchers to publish, retrieve data in a
reliable and trustworthy conduct.
Data lineage [7], [8] is used for checking data correctness. It
describes data origin, how its extracted and its modification
over time.
3. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
In centralized digital artifact system, when users request for
service it will be fetched from the RDF stored in the central
server and delivered. In semantic web which uses self-
reference the verification occurs between a single central
server and different URNs resulting in just a reference tree as
output.
But in distributed digital artifact system, resources are
distributed among different domains and each domain can
communicate with each other. Here resources will not be
stored in central server, rather will be distributed, and requests
from users will be passed between different domains for
processing. Here cross site verification is possible between
different domains resulting in a complete forest as output. In
distributed environment RDF is automatically generated
which ensures efficiency of the system whereas in the other its
externally generated which is a drawback consuming more
time.
The system consists of different domains, which will be
managed by coordinator process. Seed generator is used to
generate a number for unique identification of multiple
domains in a distributed environment. The resources will be
distributed among multiple domains where they can
communicate with each other. Hash value of a particular cited
document will be calculated [8] and Base 64 encoding [1] is
done. It can then be published on the interface once the RDF
encoding has been generated. On users request for service at
the server, the server in turn connect to other server which has
the required resource and the document is delivered to the
client if the right access is satisfied followed by Base 64
decoding.
Trusty URIs [1] will end with a hash value encoded in Bae64
notation, which can be a typical ASCII character (A-Z or a-z),
any digit (0-9), a hyphen (-) or an underscore (_). All trusty
URI will end with no less than 25 Base64 characters. The
artifact code, whose first character represent type and second
character version representing module identifiers which are
followed by data part, which holds a hash part.
http://localhost:8080/r1.RA5AbXdpz5DcaYXCh9l3eI9ruBosi
L5XDU3rxBbBaUO70
From the above example, localhost:8080/ represents self-
references, resources that holds within, their own trusty URI.
The whole thing that follows r1. is the artifact code. Its first
character R recognize the module indicating its type and
second character A specifies the version. The left behind 43
characters represent the real hash value.
The system consists of a server process which manage the
various domains. The RDF generator process is responsible
for generating metadata for the uploaded data in the session.
Centralized and distributed storage of document/data is
controlled by a storage process. Hashing make sure that data
is integrated and encoding is employed for secure traversal of
hash value. Client process verify the integrity of the document
on the arrival at client side.
Fig.2 System Architecture
The modules of the proposed system can be broadly classified
into the following namely,
a. Seed Generation
b. Distributed Communication
c. File Content Access
d. RDF Access
e. RDF Transferral

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f. Client Request Processing
a. Seed Generation
Seed is a sequence of randomly generated number, providing
unique id. A lineage algorithm [7] is employed. Whenever a
domain is registered with the distributed system,its
corresponding storage id is created which will be further used
for its unique identification. Each domain will be linked to a
seed, using which one domain will be connected to the other.
Seed generator is used to connect server in a domain which
want to part of the semantic web publication, through which
index of reference tree is built in multiple domain.
On each user request, domain verifies seed to identify the site
of the requested document to be delivered. Distributed
network connects its different domains to each other where
users can publish, retrieve and replicate documents distributed
through the network.
b. Distributed Communication
Here each domain is free to communicate with each other,
since the index of reference tree is built in multiple domain. A
document can cite other publisher in a distributed
environment. Each domain can post their publication to
another domain or even to themselves. The domain to which
posted can either approve or reject the document. But it
requires no validation if posted to themselves. If approved its
RDF [10] is automatically generated, and the document is
published on the interface, accessible to all others across the
network and if rejected its corresponding entry will be
deleted. A domain himself acting as an attacker can sabotage
the entrusted document given upon trust. But even presented
in a distributed environment enabling inter-domain
communication, the system ensures security to the document
making digital artifacts on the web verified and trustworthy
using trusty URIs and prevents MIMA attacks.
c. File Content Access
At FA, using SHA-512 hash generation algorithm [8] hash
value is calculated, to which after appending two zero-bits are
converted to Base64 notation generating trusty URN and
complete trusty URI.
d. RDF Access
At RA, supports multiple graphs which works on RDF
content. It allows self-references, resources that contain their
own trusty URI. For Unicode characters a SHA-512 is
generated in UTF-8 encoding, append two zero bits and is
finally converted to Base64 notation.
e. RDF Transferral
At RB, trusty URI represents single RDF graph. Similar to
RA, hash value is calculated for Unicode using SHA-512 in
UTF-8 encoding and is transformed to Base64 notation.
f. Client Request Processing
The user request for service (finding, querying, filtering) at
the server. The server in turn connect to other server which
has the required resource. The connection requesting server
has the hash index to verify that they are also in trusted
domain. If the right access satisfied, Base64 decoding
employed and the document is delivered to the client.. Any
modification deny further access to that URL, returning an
error message informing uniform location has been changed.
Integration or verification of trusty uri is made with the help
of RDF meta data, which is machine understandable data.
Whenever a domain uploaded the data, its corresponding hash
value is included in the rdf tag with another metadata like
seed, storage location etc. On browser’s request for the
document, the server respond with trusty uri which contain the
hash value in the Base64 encoded form. When the document
is loaded the client process calculate the hash value and
perform matching function to do accept/reject.
3.1 The Seed Generation Algorithm
A lineage algorithm [7], [9] is used to generate a seed which
is a randomly generated number for unique identification.
Whenever a domain is registered with the distributed system,
its corresponding storage id is created which will be further
used for its unique identification. Each domain will be linked
to a seed using which one domain will be connected to other.
On each user request, domain verifies seed to identify the
location of the requested content to be delivered. Every first
post in each seed will be treated as parent seed which will be
followed by child seeds. Each user request will processed
from parent seed to childrens. The parent seed is searched
using bubble sort, with a complexity of O(n) whereas
childrens use quick sort with O(nlogn) complexity. The search
is completed with an overall complexity of O(nlogn) which
improves the performance.
4. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION
Experiments are conducted on Intel Core i3 processor with
CPU of 2.40GHz. In order to measure several parameters of
the system different data sets were experimented.
Distributed digital artifact system shows high performance
than other systems in terms of MIMA detection rate and
MIMA prevention rate.
A. MIMA Detection Rate
Man in the middle attack is a type of cyber attack where a
malicious actor tries to get information that two parties send
to each other. Since humans totally dependent on the internet,
MIMA attacks have tremendously increased and preventing
them is very essential.

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Fig.3 MIMA detection rate
Fig.3 shows that as years pass by the attacks rapidly increase.
It illustrates a comparison between different attacks like virus,
trojen hourse, phishing and man in the middle attacks and it
shows that as years go man in the middle attack(MIMA) is on
its hike and detecting MIMA is very difficult i.e, its detection
rate has rapidly decreased which shows the relevance of this
work.
Fig.4 MIMA prevention rate
Fig.4 shows shows that MIMA is evidently prevented using
this system compared to the existing. It offers security to the
data in the semantic web using reference links. On the web,
attacker constantly watches user practices and is vigilant of
web applications. They always try to impose attacks on the
network, by even slightly manipulating any content on the
web. The user unknowing of the attack access the data which
seems to be same as original and gets exposed to these
attacks. Since fisching, online payments, e-commerce sites,
netbanking etc. gained wide proliferation nowadays, these
type of website attacks are very emerging and has become a
serious issue.
5. CONCLUSION
The Distributed digital artifact system for MIMA is where
resources are distributed among different domains and each
domain can communicate with each other. Unlike centralized
system, distributed system gives users possibility to check
whether the data have been modified. The relevant man in the
middle attack is prevented to an extent by ensuring
verifiability and reliability. The system ensures that data
published within the system interface cannot be accessed
anywhere outside the system, with the use of reference trees
providing security at an overall level. Any manipulation to the
data is efficiently identified and any further access to that
data is blocked by informing user that the uniform location
has been changed. Here only man in the middle attack is
considered. This can be extended to more attacks.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Tobias Kuhn and Michel Dumontier, “Making Digital
Artifacts on the Web Verifiable and Reliable”, IEEE
Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering,
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[2] Patrick P. Tsang, Apu Kapadia, Member, IEEE, Cory
Cornelius, and Sean W. Smith, “Nymble: Blocking
Misbehaving Users in Anonymizing Networks”, IEEE
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[3] Tobias Kuhn and Michel Dumontier, “Trusty URIs:
Verifiable, Immutable, and Permanent Digital
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Hashes”, Internet Engineering Task Force
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