DEVELOPING PUBLIC KEY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR HTTPS USING BLOCKCHAIN

• Main Author: Putu Gede Wirasuta, I
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/56339
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The need for secure communication was a fundamental part of Internet which was realized by HTTP over TLS. Public key infrastructure utilizing X.509 certificate as communication medium and certificate authority as its trusted party is an important part of HTTPS. However, it comes with its own issues in speed, security, and transparency due to its centralized characteristic. From a security standpoint, a breach or bad behavior in certificate authority would affect all past and future certificate. This only gets worse when considering the opaqueness of certificate management processes, which makes it harder to know when a certificate authority is behaving badly. In this final project, a public key infrastructure implementing web of trust concept is developed using blockchain. It is made for HTTPS certificate management. The solution is implemented on Ethereum blockchain platform. It has the same functionality and operation speed as a certificate authority-based public key infrastructure. It is better in terms of security and transparency. However, due to the limitation of the implementation, it is expensive, vulnerable to trust store poisoning, and slow on certificate use. All of which needs to be addressed in further development.