A Challenge-Response Assisted Authorisation Scheme for Data Access in Permissioned Blockchains.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Permissioned blockchains facilitate secure data sharing among authorized users.
• Current data authorization methods in permissioned blockchains risk user privacy if consensus nodes are compromised.
• Exposing user credentials to untrusted nodes during authorization can lead to unauthorized data access and privacy breaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel authorization scheme for permissioned blockchains that safeguards user credentials.
• To address the vulnerability of user privacy when consensus nodes in blockchain networks become untrusted.
• To reduce the computational load on the consensus network during the data authorization process.

Main Methods:

• Introduction of the Challenge-Response Assisted Access Authorisation (CRA3) scheme.
• Implementation of a challenge-response mechanism to verify data access requests without exposing user credentials.
• Decentralized computation of authorization tasks between data requesters and providers.

Main Results:

• CRA3 effectively protects user credentials from compromised or malicious consensus nodes.
• The proposed scheme prevents privacy leakage by eliminating the need for nodes to access sensitive user information.
• Significant reduction in the computational burden on the blockchain's consensus network for authorization.

Conclusions:

• CRA3 offers a robust solution for secure and private data access authorization in permissioned blockchain networks.
• The scheme enhances user privacy and data security by design, even in adversarial network conditions.
• CRA3 improves the efficiency of permissioned blockchains by optimizing the authorization process.