Enhancing Trust in PKI with Blockchain Decentralization
Explore a groundbreaking blockchain-based method decentralizing the ACME Protocol to boost trust in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Learn about the challenges faced by existing systems, the role of Certificate Authorities (CAs), and the potential of blockchain technology in reinforcing security and privacy measures for critical data transmission globally.
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A Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI Elie F. Kfoury Elie F. Kfoury1, David Khoury2, Ali AlSabeh1, Jose Gomez1, Jorge Crichigno1, Elias Bou- Harb3 1 University of South Carolina, SC, USA 2American University of Science and Technology, Beirut, Lebanon 3The University of Texas at San Antonio, TX, USA 1 3/19/2025
Agenda Introduction Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) ACME Protocol Background on Blockchain Proposed System Domain Control Verification Secure Session Establishment Results Conclusion and Future Work 2 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Introduction Critical data is constantly sent across the globe through diverse technologies and protocols Internet of Things (IoT) E-Commerce E-Government Instant Messaging (IM) Conversational media (Voice over IP/LTE) Many applications are facing deployment issues due to the lack of proper security and privacy measures IoT has not been widely adopted by organizations due to security challenges, specially client authentication 3 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Most existing systems are secured through a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with a trusted third-party Certificate Authority (CA) The PKI/CA infrastructure depends on its trust model Unfortunately, trust in CA remains a critical challenge (e.g., Diginotar, Comodo) A major reason for having trust problems with CAs is centralization Denial of Service (DoS) Acquiring certificates from CAs can be cumbersome as the domain name verification is done through a collection of ad-hoc mechanisms 4 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
ACME Protocol Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol has been proposed to automate the certificate issuance process Used by Let s Encrypt CA Deploying an HTTPS-enabled website is complicated, expensive, and error- prone for server operators Installation of a certificate in a web server requires the server to use a key generation software Manually follow steps to configure and validate the control of the domain name ACME only solved the automation issue, but the trust concerns remain as ACME requires a trusted CA 5 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
ACME Protocol The CA generates a random token and sends the token and list of challenges that the client (certificate s requester) can complete to prove ownership of identifier The client selects the HTTP challenge, creates a file containing a token, and hosts it at a directory on the claimed server. Client informs the CA that challenge is complete The CA verifies that the file is present and that it contains the correct challenge response Client sends a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) CA issues the certificate 6 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Background on Blockchain Emerging technology Decentralized network No single point of failure Ensures data immutability Cryptographic functions and Consensus algorithms The Ethereum Blockchain is an open-source featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality Smart contracts programming Beyond digital currency, Decentralized applications (DApps) Turing complete scripting language 7 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Proposed System 8 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Domain Control Verification 9 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Secure Session Establishment 10 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
GAS/USD Requirements 11 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Conclusion and Future Work Blockchain-based method that decentralizes the ACME protocol by combining elements of the PKI/CA model with Blockchain technology It aims at resolving the trust concerns of the existing PKI/CA infrastructure The method eliminates the need for a trusted CA in the domain verification process and resolves DDoS attacks targeting single points of failures. Results showed that the solution is efficient in terms of transaction costs For future work, we intend to develop the session establishment software module as a plug-in to be integrated in major browsers Additionally, we aim at solving the client authentication problem. 12 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Acknowledgement Thanks to the National Science Foundation (NSF)! Activities in the CI Lab at the UofSC are supported by NSF, Division Of Graduate Education (DGE) #1822567 13 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
Thank You Contact info for further questions ekfoury@email.sc.edu dkhoury@aust.edu.lb CyberInfrastructure Lab (CI Lab) website http://ce.sc.edu/cyberinfra/ 14 3/19/2025 Blockchain-based Method for Decentralizing the ACME Protocol to Enhance Trust in PKI
