Secure Document Sharing Application using Blockchain

Project Title

Secure Document Sharing Application using Blockchain

Project Area of Specialization BlockchainProject Summary

Growth in blockchain technology has been witnessed through the development of bitcoins and other crypto-currencies. Especially an application called storj which uses the concept of distributed cloud storage. In this project, an extended version of existing documents storage application will be developed by considering the Traceability, Immutability, Integrity and Confidentiality features. This application will enable the end-users to share their confidential data and files efficiently. Although there are several applications, but Existing data sharing platforms depend on a trusted third party (TTP). Due to the involvement of TTP, these systems are dependent on centralized services like GDrive, Dropbox, and even social applications used for sharing photos, etc. We believe that confidential information should not be exchanged through these applications. Our focus is to enable a secured decentralized peer- to-peer document sharing application that prevents anybody to modify the document and only an authorized person can view it. A greater level of security is achieved by applying some critical algorithms from the area of cryptography to strongly encrypt the file and ensure that the receiver can gain access to the document. For immutability and document key sharing (used to encrypt document), the blockchain concepts will be used where the transaction will be signed by using the sender’s private key and contents of the transaction are encrypted by using the public key of the recipient.

Project Objectives

Following are the core objectives of the designed project;

• The objective of this project is to design and develop a secure document sharing application that would not be traditional application but a peer to peer based on the concept of blockchain.
• The main purpose is to implement the system on blockchain is to keep a decentralized sharing system to achieve To achieve;                     1. Traceability                                                     2. Immutability                                                   3.Integrity                                                           4.Confidentiality
• To make the system more secure we are implementing the entire system using canalized services for data storage while the trust and credentials are exchanged though blockchain (Ethereum) so that every document that the authenticated users uploaded on central location (server) should be visible to everyone.
• As the user will access the uploaded files from the server after passing authentication and authorization mechanism. This way the transaction will be more efficient, and it will resist against known attacks.
• In addition to that we have to implement a document key exchange protocol.
• Since our intention is to use the Web Services so we will consider HTTP as a communication protocol. This will facilitate us to use the HTTP authentication protocol.
• The file will be stored in either in the remote storage on the sever or we will use MongoDB. For user management we may use SQL based database.
• In order to communicate with the blockchain network, we will create key pair and public key will be share with the other registered user. At the receiver end the user will download, decrypt and use that file.

Project Implementation Method

In current age of digitization, there are many applications developed and developed for sensitive document sharing but most of them do not consider confidentiality and integrity of the documents. In this project, we will design and develop a secure platform for the users to exchange confidential files or report. In this we will follow fowling steps:

MECHANISHM:

• As a first step each user must be registered in the system. If he is not registers he will not be able to interaction with the designed project. The registered credentials and information will be further used for authentication of the users, which is considered an important feature of the distributed application.
• In the next step, the authenticated user will select files which he intends to share with other users or upload on the system.
• As file is selected, the sender will encrypt that file either by using AES or DES algorithm. In this the user will generate a random symmetric key.
• Then the file will be uploaded on the central location (server) and the user will access the uploaded files from the server after passing authentication and authorization mechanism.
• In addition to that we have to implement a key exchange protocol.
• Since our intention is to use the Web Services so we will consider HTTP as a communication protocols. This will facilitate us to use the HTTP authentication protocol.
• This file will be stored in either in the remote storage on the sever or we will use MongoDB. For user management we may use SQL based database. In order to communicated with the blockchain network, we will create key pair and public key will be share with the other registered user.
• At the receiver end the user will download, decrypt and use that file.

Benefits of the Project

Following are the benefits;

1. Security: Our Project Provide us the secure environment for Document sharing. So we can easily share the personal document from one person to another with trust.
2. Transparency and Tracability: The main benefit of our project is that we achieve greater Transparency, enhanced security and easier traceability.
3. Authenticity: System should be able to communicate to the central database to verify the authenticity of the users.
4. Efficiency: System should be efficient that it will not get hang if heavy traffic on the network will take place.
5. User-friendly: System should be easily used by the customer in other words should be user-friendly.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Our basic purpose is to securely exchange sensitive documents between authenticated recipients over peer to peer network by considering its confidentiality, integrity and traceability.To achieve the objectives, IPFS (Interplanetary File System or related tools) can be used as a baseline protocol over network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. In this, Blockchain will be used and web services to manage and distribute documents in secure fashion.Also in order to protect sensitive information from attackers, need security services that are authentication, confidentiality and data integrity. In addition to that, the data must be kept in safe place, which should be only accessible to the authorized person for analysis, views decisions.  

Final Deliverable of the Project Software SystemCore Industry SecurityOther IndustriesCore Technology BlockchainOther TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Partnerships to achieve the GoalRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	69560
Hard disk	Equipment	1	19000	19000
Stationary	Miscellaneous	1	9560	9560
LED with RAM	Equipment	1	41000	41000