Privacy-awareness in blockchain-based PKI

Working paper

Conventional public key infrastructure (PKI) designs are not optimal and contain security flaws; there is much work underway in improving PKI. The properties given by the Bitcoin blockchain and its derivatives are a natural solution to some of the problems with PKI - in particular, certificate transparency and elimination of single points of failure. Recently-proposed blockchain PKI designs are built as public ledgers linking identity with public key, giving no provision of privacy. We consider the suitability of a blockchain-based PKI for contexts in which PKI is required, but in which linking of identity with public key is undesirable; specifically, we show that blockchain can be used to construct a privacy-aware PKI while simultaneously eliminating some of the problems encountered in conventional PKI.

• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Not peer reviewed
• Series: CDT Technical Paper
• Publication date: 2015-01-01
• Edition: Author's Original
• Paper number: 21/15
• Language: English
• Keywords: computer security; CDT; computing
• Subjects: Cyber Security; Computer security; Computing