Blockchain technology emphasizes trust and collaboration through distributed networks and is deemed to contribute to building information modeling (BIM) based construction collaboration and management. However, the open nature of blockchain introduces severe cybersecurity attacks that undermine the trustworthiness of construction management. One salient point is identity authentication for security BIM data access in the blockchain environment. The traditional public-private key or password authenticate methods are vulnerable to malicious theft. Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) is an emerging, password-free method for authenticating identities. It allows one party to prove the truth or falsity of a statement to another party without revealing any meaningful information to the counterpart. Therefore, this study proposes a preliminary user authentication protocol based on the non-interactive ZKP protocol, specifically the zk-SNARK protocol, for adaptive authentication of blockchain BIM. The adaptive authentication recognizes a random subset of on-chain historical BIM operation records to prove the identity according to the protocol. Without revealing any meaningful knowledge to the authentication system, this adaptive data access control prevents password attacks using the BIM records on-chain. Finally, the proposed protocol is deployed on the test blockchain and implemented in a preliminary case study to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. The main contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the theoretical contribution is proposing a novel zk-SARKs-based identity authentication protocol that utilizes the on-chain BIM operation records. Secondly, the practical contribution relies on presenting a ZoKrates-based workflow of generating proofs, creating smart contracts, and deploying on the blockchain for verification
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong - ORCID: 0000-0003-1993-3129
The University of Hong Kong, China - ORCID: 0000-0003-2217-3693
Chapter Title
Zero-Knowledge Proof for Trusted Construction Management: A Preliminary Study of Adaptive Blockchain BIM Identity Authentication
Authors
Lingming Kong, Rui Zhao, Fan Xue
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3.33
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
CONVR 2023 - Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Construction Applications of Virtual Reality
Book Subtitle
Managing the Digital Transformation of Construction Industry
Editors
Pietro Capone, Vito Getuli, Farzad Pour Rahimian, Nashwan Dawood, Alessandro Bruttini, Tommaso Sorbi
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0289-3
eISBN (xml)
979-12-215-0257-2
Series Title
Proceedings e report
Series ISSN
2704-601X
Series E-ISSN
2704-5846