Introduction
Working and communicating from anywhere, at any time, from any computer equipment, has rapidly become a universal and popular use for all: companies (of all sizes), individuals, employees… these new users require securing, controlling and protecting remote exchanges and digital access, while at the same time protecting the internal resources of a company or a home, for example. Against this backdrop, technologies have evolved and solutions such as VPN (Virtual Private Network) have become increasingly popular. This system makes it possible to create a direct link between remote computer equipment, while hiding the data exchanged from the outside world by encrypting it.
In recent years, this technology has exploded on the global market, with some 277 million downloads recorded. In France, the VPN service has seen a 180% increase in traffic. The majority of security flaws in a company’s IT system do not stem from data encryption protocols during transport, but rather from the interface between the company’s intranet and the open Internet. These interfaces are connection ports governing input and output flows. If they are left open to external networks, they constitute breaches accessible to computer system intrusion. It is dangerous to leave connection ports open on the Internet without knowing how to manage the flows.
Thesis Context
Based on these two observations, EHO.Link designed the technological foundations of a solution enabling the creBased on these two observations, EHO.Link designed the technological foundations of a solution enabling the creation of a decentralized communication network with no attack surface, based on a blockchain technology making all communication (meta-)data inaccessible, and the implementation of a perfectly bidirectional VPN. The project’s solution would make it possible to exchange data over the Internet in a perfectly secure way, without any intermediaries. The project represents a technological leap forward, as well as a revolution in the world of secured communication. The project supported by the consortium is a technological revolution in cybersecurity, based on Blockchain technology to ensure complete sovereignty of data for the end user.
The project will use blockchain technologies, in particular to avoid dependence on a trusted third party. A blockchain is a distributed register, separated into partitions (blocks) that is totally decentralized, and can be made totally permanent and indisputable. In the last ten years or so, blockchain 2.0 has seen the emergence of smart contracts, which are programs that can be accessed, audited and verified by anyone acting on a blockchain. These smart contracts are therefore the only trusted third parties between the actors on a blockchain, and the only programs accessible between two objects.
The laboratory LEAT, based in the region of Nice in the south of France, has been working on consortium (rather private) blockchains for around 7 years, and has expertise in numerous implementations, including Hyperledger Sawtooth and Fabric, IOTA, EOS.IO, Ethereum Clique, Substrate Framework. On these blockchains, LEAT has experimented with numerous solutions, of different network sizes (from 3 to 25 nodes), on computers or on a Cloud, and measured a whole set of characteristics such as:
- Performance achieved in Transactions per Second (Ethereum Clique reaches 1500Tps, Substrate Aura/Granpa reaches 476Tps).
- Electrical power consumption,
- The effect of consortium algorithms on the efficiency of these blockchains.
There are a number of decentralized VPN solutions that use blockchain as the basis for decentralization, such as Orchid, Mysterious Network, Boring Protocol, Deeper Network and KelVPN. These protocols are based on relatively classic blockchains such as Ethereum for Orchid, Mysterious and KelVPN, and Solana for Boring Protocol. All these solutions are dedicated to computer-to-computer communications, are based on blockchains typically installed prior to a communication and exchange tokens or crypto-currencies in order to remunerate the company distributing the VPN.
An initial study of blockchains suggests that we prefer private (or consortium) solutions, which give one or more companies much greater assurance of being able to control all the transactions put into the blockchain. These solutions could be, for example, Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum with a CUBA-type consensus, or Substrate with an Aura+Grandpa consensus. The differences between these blockchains would mainly be the performance achieved in terms of transactions per second, to be able to receive all connection requests from clients.
As part of this thesis, the PhD student will be responsible for testing these blockchains on an experimental case close to the case of a decentralized VPN and will have to report on the best blockchain usable in an industrial case.
On the other hand, the PhD student will also be tasked with addressing the problem of identity management and authentication of blockchain users, scalability of exchanges on the application as well as on the blockchain, management and treatment of possible security flaws in the Smart Contracts to be deployed, and secure storage of user data (contact list, VPN configuration, etc.).
These 4 key questions cover just about every technological and technical issue that arises when using blockchain in a telecoms company.
Thesis supervision
This thesis will be under the supervision of Francois Verdier (Francois.Verdier@univ-cotedazur.fr), professor at the University of Cote d’Azur, Nice, and deputy director of laboratory LEAT in Sophia Antipolis. It will also be carried out in collaboration with another thesis in economics, supervised by Nathalie Oriol and Lise Arena.
Location and Salary
The place of work will be at LEAT (Laboratoire d’Electronique, d’Antennes et de Télécommication), at the Université Côte d’Azur, in the south of France (Nice region), and the PhD student will have the opportunity to travel relatively often to Marseille, where the telecommunications company Eho.Link is located.
The salary for a PhD student is 2065 euros net of tax per month. The thesis is due to start in the autumn, in September or November 2025.
To apply for this position, please send your CV and most recent Master’s grades to François Verdier at this e-mail address: francois.verdier@univ-cotedazur.fr
References
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