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Distributed attribute-based access control system using permissioned blockchain

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Abstract

Auditing provides essential security control in computer systems by keeping track of all access attempts, including both legitimate and illegal access attempts. This phase can be useful in the context of audits, where eventual misbehaving parties can be held accountable. Blockchain technology can provide the trusted auditability required for access control systems. In this paper, we propose a distributed Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) system based on blockchain to provide trusted auditing of access attempts. Besides auditability, our system presents a level of transparency that both access requesters and resource owners can benefit from it. We present a system architecture with an implementation based on Hyperledger Fabric, achieving high efficiency and low computational overhead. The proposed solution is validated through a use case of independent digital libraries. Detailed performance analysis of our implementation is presented, taking into account different consensus mechanisms and databases. The experimental evaluation shows that our presented system can effectively handle a transaction throughput of 270 transactions per second, with an average latency of 0.54 seconds per transaction.

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Notes

  1. https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/fabric

  2. https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/caliper

  3. https://1ty.me/

  4. www.ethereum.org

  5. https://zookeeper.apache.org/

  6. https://nodejs.org/en/

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the Linux Foundation in the context of the Hyperledger Fabric Based Access Control Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N5C9, Canada

    Sara Rouhani & Ralph Deters

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Rafael Belchior & Rui S. Cruz

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  1. Sara Rouhani
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Correspondence to Sara Rouhani.

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This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Special Issue on Emerging Blockchain Applications and Technology

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Rouhani, S., Belchior, R., Cruz, R.S. et al. Distributed attribute-based access control system using permissioned blockchain. World Wide Web 24, 1617–1644 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11280-021-00874-7

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