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Enabling Reference Verifiability for the World Wide Web with Webchain

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Published:01 October 2020Publication History
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Abstract

As online sources are becoming more prevalent in journalism and scientific literature, the ephemeral nature of the World Wide Web is becoming an increasingly serious issue for their verifiability, replicability, and reproducibility. The architecture of Webchain, a new system enabling source and reference verifiability on the Web, is combining distributed ledger technologies with secure timestamping to ensure the history of creation, ownership, and referential integrity of online resources. We present the architecture and system extensions, conduct a security analysis, and evaluate the Webchain system based on a comprehensive prototype implementation. The results confirm the feasibility and robustness of our approach.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
        ACM Transactions on Internet Technology  Volume 20, Issue 4
        November 2020
        391 pages
        ISSN:1533-5399
        EISSN:1557-6051
        DOI:10.1145/3427795
        • Editor:
        • Ling Liu
        Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 2020 ACM

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 October 2020
        • Online AM: 7 May 2020
        • Accepted: 1 April 2020
        • Revised: 1 February 2020
        • Received: 1 November 2019
        Published in toit Volume 20, Issue 4

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