Blockchain-Based Public Key Infrastructure: A Transparent Digital Certification Mechanism for Secure Communication

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) has been considered to be an enabler of secure communication, while, due to its complex and centralized design, there have been instances in the past for Certification Authority's (CA) misbehaving and publishing rogue certificates for targeted attacks. This research aims to present a blockchain-based mechanism that lays down a concrete foundation for creating a transparent and secure block-chain-based mechanism for the issuance and management of digital certificates that enables prevention against CA misbehaving. A prototype is deployed and tested on the Ethereum test network, and the results are made publicly available for verification and validation. As a result, the proposed Ethereum blockchain-based PKI mechanism enables secure, transparent, and auditable issuance and management of digital certificates together with the solution of Sybil, Spoofing, and Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks.