A Blockchain-Based Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure for Information-Centric Networks

Abstract

How to achieve secure content distribution and accountability in information-centric networking (ICN) is a crucial problem. Subscribers need to verify whether the data came from a reliable source, rather than from a spoofing adversary. Public key cryptography was introduced to achieve a method of authentication that binds the data packet to its owner. In existing prototypes, PKIs, identity-based signatures (IBSs) and recommendation networks are the common schemes used to ensure the authenticity and availability of public keys. However, CA-based PKIs and KGC-based IBSs have been proven to be weak when it comes to resisting security attacks, with recommendation networks being too complex to deploy. In this respect, we designed a novel distributed authentication model as a secure scheme to support public key cryptography. Our model establishes a decentralized public key infrastructure by combining the smart contracts of blockchain and optimized zero-knowledge proof-verifiable presentations by utilizing the DID project, which realizes the management of public key certificates through blockchain and ensures the authenticity and availability of public keys in decentralized infrastructure. Our scheme fundamentally solves the issues of security and feasibility in existing schemes and provides a more scalable solution with respect to authenticating data sources. An experiment demonstrated that our proposal is 20% faster than the original zero knowledge proof scheme in registration.