Development of blockchain based authentication system in smart environments

Today's smart applications depend heavily on cloud for storing, processing, securing and distributing data. The move from classical Client-Server architecture toward cloud-based is considered a big shift paradigm that leads to a number of advantages such as providing more scalable services with less operation cost and allowing usage of mobile devices (wearable and smartphones) to access data. Despite contributing to rapid development centralized architecture still has some drawbacks related to performance, trust, and security. Blockchain is a tamper-resistant ledger, which consists of a set of records organized and stored in blocks interconnected to each other through cryptographic hashing approach. Blockchain-ledger- will continue to grow as new transactions are created. The distributed nature of Blockchain means that the ledger is not controlled by a single entity, but rather a consensus approach by the participant entities, confirming the authenticity of the records. These features of Blockchain technology enable creation of trusted network among entities without the need for a central asset. The aim of this thesis research is to design and develop a trustworthy Blockchain based authentication model that will be used in smart environments. The proposed model allows end users to register with the current Blockchain network with secure authentication approach and allow registered users to query information about various services with an effective access control mechanism. In order to provide high-level security, the government agency is included in the model as an entity and the end-user authentication process is designed. Another important part of the model is Smart Contract, which increases system dynamicity. However, in Blockchain network, which should be transparent by nature, an appropriate access control mechanism is designed to enable participants in the network to query transaction information.