Token-Based Access Control

Guohua Gan,E Chen,Yan Zhu,Zhiyuan Zhou

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2979746

Abstract

Traditional centralized access control has some shortcomings in robustness, trustworthiness and circulation. Blockchains have the advantages of fault tolerance and trust. Smart contracts have the characteristics of automatic execution and flexible expansion. Tokens can well record credential information and transfer easily. In this paper, blockchain, smart contract and token are integrated and applied to access control to solve the shortcomings of traditional access control. First, access control, blockchain, smart contract and token are briefly described. Second, this paper proposes a solution by giving the general data structure of access control token, elaborating the equivalence, split, merge and verification algorithms of access control token, and explaining the system architecture of token-based access control. Last, this paper uses a token-based access control simulation system to verify that token-based access control has certain comparative advantages in robustness, trustworthiness, circulation, concurrency and so on.

Highlights

With the continuous development of distributed applications, some shortcomings of traditional centralized access control (AC) have gradually been exposed
The centralized access control system is in charge of the access privileges of the whole system, which is easy to become the bottleneck of the whole system
TBAC SOLUTION Applying tokens to access control, using blockchain networks as storage, authentication and circulation environments, using smart contract issuance and application as a logical processing form, using tokens as data bodies, recording the rules and logic of access control, executing authentication processing of access control, and ensuring correct objects are accessed by correct subject correctly is an access control mode called token-based access control

Summary

INTRODUCTION

With the continuous development of distributed applications, some shortcomings of traditional centralized access control (AC) have gradually been exposed These problems or requirements include the following aspects. This paper unifies blockchains, smart contracts and tokens, takes the blockchain as a trusted and safe storage and operation environment, and fully utilized the characteristics of automatic enforcement of smart contracts and efficient intelligent circulation of tokens and presents a token-based access control (TBAC). Whether in traditional centralized access control or distributed access control, attribute-based access control has been widely studied and applied. In this model, attributes are used to describe rules and policies.

BLOCKCHAIN

CONCLUSION