Blockchain based hierarchical semi-decentralized approach using IPFS for secure and efficient data sharing

Abstract

Nowadays, cloud servers are gathering an increasing amount of data. Data is commonly stored on cloud servers in the form of ciphertext to protect security and concealment of data. When a consumer requests to access of encrypted data, a third party must provide an access key. The system's security, however, will be compromised if the third party or internal personnel are dishonest. To address this issue, a novel blockchain-based secure decentralized system using IPFS is proposed in this research for secure data transfer. Because all participant of system model are recorded the every action on the chain, and the continuously extending chain makes it conditionally difficult to modify any block without being detected, a blockchain based system is often regarded as a safe platform. In the proposed approach, the data owner uploads an encrypted file to IPFS, which is subsequently separated into n secret sections called hash codes for data security. The data owner must additionally write the access permissions in order to achieve access to this secure data. For security, the system uses two-level key management: first, the data owner encrypts the file, and then the IPFS server makes a hash code of that encrypted file. The proposed solution, which employs blockchain technology, enables consumers to be handled across several domains, erase the single-point failure in traditional centralized systems, and overhead related to communication and computation are decreased at the consumer level. According to the security analysis, the proposed system might effectively resist single and collaboratively malicious persons, as well as untrustworthy cloud servers.

Keywords

• Cloud storage
• Blockchain
• Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
• Centralized
• Decentralized
• Semi-decentralized