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The Bitcoin Network as Platform for Trans-Organizational Attribute Authentication

Authors:
Jason Paul Cruz
Yuichi Kaji

Keywords: role-based access control; trans-organizational role; information security; Bitcoin; trusted-timestamping

Abstract:
The role-based access control (RBAC) is a natural and versatile model of the access control principle. In the real world, it is common that an organization provides a service to a user who owns a certain role that was issued by a different organization. However, such a trans-organizational RBAC is not common in a computer network because it is difficult to establish both the security that prohibits malicious impersonation of roles and the flexibility that allows small organizations/individual users to fully control their own roles. This study proposes a system that makes use of Bitcoin technology to realize a trans-organizational RBAC mechanism. Bitcoin, the first decentralized digital currency, is a payment network that has become a platform for innovative ideas. Bitcoin’s technology, including its protocol, cryptography, and open-source nature, has built a good reputation and has been applied in other applications, such as trusted timestamping. The proposed system uses Bitcoin technology as a versatile infrastructure to represent the trust and endorsement relationship that are essential in RBAC and to realize a challenge-response authentication protocol that verifies a user’s ownership of roles.

Pages: 29 to 36

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2015

Publication date: May 24, 2015

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4421

ISBN: 978-1-61208-407-7

Location: Rome, Italy

Dates: from May 24, 2015 to May 29, 2015