Exploiting Blockchain Technology for Attribute Management in Access Control Systems

Access Control systems are a key resource in computer security to properly manage the access to digital resources. Blockchain technology, instead, is a novel technology to decentralise the control and management of a shared state, representing anything from a data repository to a distributed virtual machine. We propose to integrate traditional Access Control systems with blockchain technology to allow the combined system to inherit the desirable properties blockchain technology provides, mainly transparency and, consequently, auditability. Depending on the application scenario considered, for some systems it may not be desirable to employ a fully decentralised approach. As such, in this paper we outline how our proposal can be adapted to allow for the minimal possible integration of blockchain technology in a traditional Access Control system. In particular, we consider the scenario where Attribute Managers only may be managed on chain through smart contracts. We provide a proof of concept implementation based on Ethereum, and show its performance through experimental results.