Cloud-Centric Blockchain Public Key Infrastructure for Big Data Applications

Abstract

A cloud-based public key infrastructure (PKI) utilizing blockchain technology is proposed. Big data ecosystems have scalable and resilient needs that current PKI cannot satisfy. Enhancements include using blockchains to establish persistent access to certificate data and certificate revocation lists, decoupling of data from certificate authority, and hosting it on a cloud provider to tap into its traffic security measures. Instead of holding data within the transaction data fields, certificate data and status were embedded into smart contracts. The tests revealed a significant performance increase over that of both traditional and the version that stored data within blocks. The proposed method reduced the mining data size, and lowered the mining time to 6.6% of the time used for the block data storage method. Also, the mining gas cost per certificate was consequently cut by 87%. In summary, completely decoupling the certificate authority portion of a PKI and storing certificate data inside smart contracts yields a sizable performance boost while decreasing the attack surface.