To ensure integrity, trust, immutability and authenticity of software and information (cyber data, user data and attack event data) in a collaborative environment, research is needed for cross-domain data communication, global software collaboration, sharing, access auditing and accountability. Blockchain technology can significantly automate the software export auditing and tracking processes. It allows to track and control what data or software components are shared between entities across multiple security domains. Our blockchain-based solution relies on role-based and attribute-based access control and prevents unauthorized data accesses. It guarantees integrity of provenance data on who updated what software module and when. Furthermore, our solution detects data leakages, made behind the scene by authorized blockchain network participants, to unauthorized entities. Our approach is used for data forensics/provenance, when the identity of those entities who have accessed/ updated/ transferred the sensitive cyber data or sensitive software is determined. All the transactions in the global collaborative software development environment are recorded in the blockchain public ledger and can be verified any time in the future. Transactions can not be repudiated by invokers. We also propose modified transaction validation procedure to improve performance and to protect permissioned IBM Hyperledger-based blockchains from DoS attacks, caused by bursts of invalid transactions.

A practical definition of an erasure is presented and leads to new expressions for correct and incorrect decoding probabilities for Reed-Solomon codes, assuming an incomplete decoder. The main benefit of this approach is that, in contrast with the usual approach, one is able to analytically demonstrate the performance improvement provided by errors-and-erasures decoding relative to errors-only decoding. A technique is presented for evaluating the performance of Reed-Solomon codes for both types of decoding on an interleaved burst error channel such as is seen in digital magnetic tape recording. Several illustrative examples are included.>