MARTSIA: Safeguarding Data Confidentiality in Blockchain-Driven Process Execution

2024-07-15

arXiv.org

AI Summary

Public blockchains inherently conflict between data transparency and business confidentiality. Method: This paper proposes a message-level, fine-grained access control scheme for multi-party workflow execution. It introduces a novel message-component–level, policy-driven multi-authority attribute-based encryption (MA-ABE) mechanism that ensures end-to-end data confidentiality while preserving blockchain consistency and fault tolerance. The approach integrates blockchain, MA-ABE, and distributed hash tables (DHT) into a verifiable and scalable privacy-preserving architecture. Contribution/Results: Evaluated in real-world business scenarios, the scheme supports full network data replication yet strictly enforces user-defined confidentiality policies. It significantly enhances both the security and practicality of on-chain workflow execution, demonstrating strong adaptability to complex, privacy-sensitive decentralized applications.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Blockchains and distributed ledgers
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Blockchain technology streamlines multi-party collaborations in decentralized settings, especially when trust is limited or difficult to establish. While public blockchains enhance transparency and reliability by replicating data across all network nodes, they also conflict with confidentiality. Here, we introduce Multi-Authority Approach to Transaction Systems for Interoperating Applications (MARTSIA) to address this challenge. MARTSIA provides fine-grained read-access control at the message-part level by combining user-defined policies with certifier-declared attributes. The approach guarantees that even though data is replicated across the network to maintain consistency, fault tolerance, and availability, its confidentiality is securely preserved through encryption. To this end, MARTSIA integrates blockchain technologies, Multi-Authority Attribute-Based Encryption, and distributed hash-table file storages. This architecture effectively balances the transparency inherent in public blockchains with the privacy required for sensitive applications. We present the tool and its applicability in a business scenario.

Problem

• Ensures data confidentiality in blockchain-driven processes
• Balances transparency and privacy in public blockchains
• Provides fine-grained read-access control for sensitive data

Innovation

• Fine-grained read-access control via user-defined policies
• Multi-Authority Attribute-Based Encryption for data confidentiality
• Integration of blockchain with distributed hash-table storage