A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer that facilitates secure, reliable communication between services in a distributed system. HAFAS is a distributed off-the-shelf timetable information system maintained by Hacon, a Siemens Mobility subsidiary. Introducing a service mesh to HAFAS is a base scenario for a call of research to understand better the requirements and impacts of a service mesh on distributed systems.

This thesis examines introducing a service mesh to a distributed software system and investigates the impact on the example of HAFAS. Scenarios for HAFAS that profit from the features of a service mesh were identified and mapped to functional requirements. The service mesh technological landscape was investigated by defining additional non-functional requirements and identifying a project satisfying the requirements. A subset of prioritized scenarios emerged after investigating the previous scenarios more closely in the context of the identified service mesh project.

By introducing the identified service mesh project and the scenario subset to a HAFAS environment as a case study, valuable data on the feasibility of the operation has arisen. The resulting data allowed the investigation of value added by the service mesh and impacts on latency and resource consumption. Data analysis showed that introducing a service mesh has an acceptable impact on latency, memory, and CPU resources. The benefits gained through mTLS encryption improve the system’s overall security by introducing the security properties of confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity to HAFAS’s data in transit.

The results of this thesis help organizations that plan on adopting a service mesh to their technology stack.

Dash Platform is a technology stack for developing decentralized applications on the Dash network. The two most important architectural components, Drive and DAPI, transform the Dash P2P network into a document-based cloud that developers can integrate into their decentralized applications. Dash Platform is currently still in the development phase and is not yet in a state that corresponds to mature software.

This is where our master project comes in, with the given goal of designing and conducting a penetration test of Dash Platform. This final report, written by the executing team, provides a detailed insight into the methodology applied during the penetration test and the results obtained. To conduct the penetration test, both methods of static source code analysis were chosen as well as stress testing techniques such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. API testing was also carried out through, for example, fuzzing or selecting targeted payloads, and Dash Platform was examined for game-theoretic approaches.

In the course of this project, some potential attack vectors or ambiguities in the functionality of Dash Platform were found, which should be addressed by the development team before the first post-beta release.

Since the last few years, the adoption of cryptocurrencies by the general population has been steadily increasing. However, a high technical barrier to entry remains for the average user to successfully and securely conduct transactions. In order to continue to drive the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, it is necessary to offer a simpler and more fail-safe way to conduct transactions than is currently possible via ordinary wallets.

The blockchain project Dash is currently developing Dash Platform, an approach for realizing decentralized applications. In contrast to better-known projects such as Ethereum, in which smart contracts are realized through program code on the blockchain, Dash relies on a data-oriented approach (data contracts). This means that the application logic is outsourced to the clients, while the application data is stored in a separate blockchain.

In this paper, the technology behind Dash Platform is presented on the basis of DashPay. It also covers the basic building blocks that make DashPay possible, such as identities and the Dash Platform Name Service (DPNS). DashPay is a data contract in which users can uniquely identify themselves via a username and send contact requests to each other. Contacts can thus establish bidirectional, direct payment channels between each other. DashPay thus enables simple, fast and secure payments via the Dash network. DashPay users will no longer need to exchange long and confusing public addresses in order to process payments with their contacts.