PB-PKI: a privacy-aware blockchain-based PKI

Conference item

Conventional public-key infrastructure (PKI) designs using certificate authorities and web-of-trust are not optimal and have security flaws. The properties afforded by the Bitcoin blockchain are a natural solution to some of the problems with PKI - in particular, certificate transparency and elimination of single points-offailure. Proposed blockchain-based PKI designs are built as public ledgers linking identity with public key, providing no privacy. We consider cases requiring privacy-aware PKIs, which do not link identity with public key. We show that blockchain technology can be used to construct a privacy-aware PKI while eliminating some of the problems of conventional PKI, and present PB-PKI, a privacy-aware blockchain-based PKI.

Authors: Axon, L; Goldsmith, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: SCITEPRESS
• Host title: Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications
• Journal: 14th International Conference on Security and Cryptography (SECRYPT 2017)
• Volume: 6
• Publication date: 2016-09-12
• Acceptance date: 2017-05-14
• Event location: Madrid, Spain
• Event start date: 2017-07-24
• Event end date: 2017-07-26
• DOI: 10.5220/0006419203110318
• ISBN: 9789897582592
• Keywords: blockchain; security; privacy-awareness; public-key infrastructure