AuthChain: A decentralized blockchain-based authentication system

Current online services rely blindly on authentication providers to perform identity management and authentication. User credentials in these authentication providers are susceptible to large-scale account hacking. Distributed Ledger Teachnology (DLT) in general and blockchain can offer a solution by decentralizing ownership of credentials and a protocol for verifying one's record in an immutable chain of data. Blockchain can create a secure platform for online service providers to authenticate users with no single point of failure and decrease the possibility of attacks and user data leakages via backdoors. The purpose of this research is to analyze the limitations of centralized authentication system and propose a blockchain-based authentication solution to overcome the issues. In this paper we propose a robust, transparent and secure blockchain-based authentication mechanism called AuthChain. The implementation and testing of the proposed web and android native application was successfully completed with a prototype implementation on single node Ethereum Blockchain.