Attribute-Based Access Control for Smart Cities: A Smart-Contract-Driven Framework

Efficient and reliable access control in smart cities is critical for the protection of various resources decision making task execution. Existing centralized schemes suffer from limitations single point failure, low reliability, poor scalability. This article, therefore, proposes a distributed framework by combining blockchain contract technology attribute-based (ABAC) model. The consists one policy management (PMC) managing ABAC policies, subject attribute (SAMC) attributes subjects (i.e., entities accessing resources), object (OAMC) objects being accessed), (ACC) performing control. To show feasibility proposed framework, we construct local private Ethereum system to implement four contracts also conduct experiments evaluate monetary cost as well compare with an existing list (ACL)-based scheme. experimental results that although scheme consumes more money than ACL-based at deployment stage, it introduces less during running especially large-scale cities.