Enhancing PKI Security in Hyperledger Fabric with an Indigenous Certificate Authority

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is utilised in Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) to safeguard the network and transactions. It accomplishes this by managing the public-private key pairs and digital certificates that are essential for encryption and authentication. A conventional certificate authority (CA) called Fabric CA comes with HLF and offers certificate management services for the network. However, Fabric CA has certain limitations, such as limited scalability, the inability to handle identities and certificates outside of the network, and limited support for certificate revocation lists. To address these drawbacks, an indigenous CA has been developed and integrated into HLF by replacing fabric CA. The proposed research work also explains how successful integration offers enhanced security, scalability, and flexibility in managing certificates and identities. This article also outlines the steps required to replace the Fabric CA in HLF and explains how the proposed CA was developed. Finally, the effectiveness of the CA is evaluated using metrics such as throughput, time per signature, and issue time. The performance evaluations demonstrate that the developed CA surpasses Fabric CA and is suitable for production environments.