A Trusted Approach for Decentralised and Privacy-Preserving Identity Management

Abstract

Identity Management (IdM) systems have traditionally relied on a centralized model prone to privacy, trust, and security problems, like potential massive data breaches or identity spoofing. Identity providers accumulate excessive power that might allow them to become a big brother, analyzing and storing as much data as possible. Users should be able to trust identity providers and manage their personal information straightforwardly without compromising their privacy. The European OLYMPUS project introduces a distributed approach for IdM based on enhanced Attribute-Based Credentials (ABC) that splits the role of Identity Provider to limit their influence and chances to become a unique point of failure. However, the trust relationship between service providers, users, and identity providers is still a gap in those kinds of privacy-preserving ABC systems. Decentralized technologies are an opportunity to break away from the centralized model and propose systems that respect privacy while increasing users’ trust. This paper presents an evolution of the OLYMPUS architecture, maintaining all the privacy features and incorporating distributed ledger technologies to enhance trust and security in online transactions and IdM systems. The proposed system has been implemented, tested, and validated, showing its performance and feasibility to manage user’s identity in a fully privacy-preserving, distributed and reliable way.