DAcc: Decentralized Ledger based Access Control for Enterprise Applications

Access control is one of the fundamental security mechanisms of IT systems. Most existing access control schemes rely on a centralized party to manage and enforce access control policies. As decentralized ledger technologies, especially permissioned networks, find more applicability beyond cryptocurrencies in enterprise solutions is expected that the security requirements will increase. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an access control system that works in a decentralized environment without compromising the unique features of a decentralized ledger. Decentralized ledger based access control schemes have been proposed but have limitations such as lack of capability to protect the access history and detect/tolerate malicious participants. In order to address these concerns, we propose a novel decentralized ledger based access control system that utilizes cryptography. The newly proposed system is flexible and works with various storage system. The proposed system also provides verifiability for end users to detect compromised nodes in the decentralized ledger and high level privacy. We implement the scheme using Hyperledger Fabric and give detailed information of the prototype, and also assess its performance to show that it is practical for real world applications.