@Article{cmc.2020.011554,
AUTHOR = {Lejun Zhang, Zhijie Zhang, Weizheng Wang, Rasheed Waqas, Chunhui Zhao, Seokhoon Kim, Huiling Chen},
TITLE = {A Covert Communication Method Using Special Bitcoin  Addresses Generated by Vanitygen},
JOURNAL = {Computers, Materials \& Continua},
VOLUME = {65},
YEAR = {2020},
NUMBER = {1},
PAGES = {597--616},
URL = {http://www.techscience.com/cmc/v65n1/39585},
ISSN = {1546-2226},
ABSTRACT = {As an extension of the traditional encryption technology, information hiding 
has been increasingly used in the fields of communication and network media, and the 
covert communication technology has gradually developed. The blockchain technology 
that has emerged in recent years has the characteristics of decentralization and tamper 
resistance, which can effectively alleviate the disadvantages and problems of traditional 
covert communication. However, its combination with covert communication thus far has 
been mostly at the theoretical level. The BLOCCE method, as an early result of the 
combination of blockchain and covert communication technology, has the problems of 
low information embedding efficiency, the use of too many Bitcoin addresses, low 
communication efficiency, and high costs. The present research improved on this method, 
designed the V-BLOCCE which uses base58 to encrypt the plaintext and reuses the 
addresses generated by Vanitygen multiple times to embed information. This greatly 
improves the efficiency of information embedding and decreases the number of Bitcoin 
addresses used. Under the premise of ensuring the order, the Bitcoin transaction 
OP_RETURN field is used to store the information required to restore the plaintext and 
the transactions are issued at the same time to improve the information transmission 
efficiency. Thus, a more efficient and feasible method for the application of covert 
communication on the blockchain is proposed. In addition, this paper also provides a 
more feasible scheme and theoretical support for covert communication in blockchain.},
DOI = {10.32604/cmc.2020.011554}
}