FolketID: A Decentralized Blockchain-Based NemID Alternative Against DDoS Attacks

Abstract

Electronic Identity (eID) is a solution toward solving the identity problem when deploying e-Government. Such solution should not only be secure, but also have to be robust enough under adversarial conditions. In Denmark, NemID is a digital eID used to log into public websites, for online banking and many digital services. However, it suffers from some security threats such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. In 2013, a tremendous DDoS attack over NemID caused chaos in Danish society, people found themselves out-of-reach to many services. Focused on this threat, we develop FolketID, a blockchain-based NemID alternative against DDoS attacks. The DDoS mitigation is achieved by not only utilizing its powerful data distribution ability, but also exploiting the economy system in blockchain. It particularly takes use of the transaction fees to effectively prevent DDoS attacks. In the evaluation, our experimental results demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of FolketID in defeating DDoS attacks.