Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Implement Client Side Security for Climate SIG Fabric Application

The Hyperledger Mentorship Program is a structured hands-on learning opportunity for new developers who may otherwise lack the opportunity to gain exposure to Hyperledger open source development and entry to the technical community. These Mentorship Spotlights highlight the work done by the Mentors and the Mentees as part of their program participation. Learn more here.

 

Mentorship Project Title

Implement Client Side Security for Climate SIG Fabric Application

Description To explore and implement an application with client side authentication for Hyperledger Fabric utility emissions data channel.
Status COMPLETED 
Difficulty HIGH 
Additional Details Learning Objectives, Expected Outcomes and Project Results available here.

Final Project Video

Mentee

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Bertrand Rioux

King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center

“Climate side security involves moving private keys of users off Hyperledger Fabric network servers. To solve this problem, I built a custom identity provider type for Fabric using the WebSocket protocol. This required designing an identity server to create WS-X.509 certificates using secure asynchronous communication between a Fabric app and a user’s external keys. Learning how to build a custom crypto wallet app compatible with Fabric and contributing to active Hyperledger projects, including Hyperledger Cactus and the Blockchain Carbon Accounting Lab, were highly rewarding experiences. This mentorship project has helped accelerate my goal of building technology for climate action.”

Mentors

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Si Chen

Open Source Strategies, Inc.

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Kamlesh Nagware

Snapper Future Tech

Si Chen

“This mentorship started because we wanted to have our Hyperledger Fabric emissions accounting application authenticated at the client like other dApps. It went through several twists and turns as we tested different approaches. In the end, we came up with an elegant solution that could be used for mobile, IOT, and web apps. The mentoring process taught me more about how to bring more developers on board and listen to their input while still providing guidance on the direction of the project. This combination is very important in an open source, distributed development model.”

Kamlesh Nagware

“For this research project, which aimed to determine the right client side identity approach, we initially had something in mind like use TrustID but then turned to exploring Hyperleger Fabric off-line signing but for real client side identity model. Its very important to have a mechanism like Metamask in Ethereum. This was a really challenging project. Our mentee, Bertrand Rioux, put his research and experience with cryptography and client security to work in implementing this project. Special thanks to Pritam Singh, who is a mentee in another project, for joining hands to help build a more secure architecture design for the client security model in Hyperledger Fabric. Designing and adding WebSocket and supporting additional cryptography algorithms to the Hyperledger Fabric node SDK is the real achievement of this project.”

A special thanks to the Hyperledger member companies for funding this important program. To learn more about our Hyperledger Mentorship Program and how you can participate in our next cohort, head over to our program overview page on the Hyperledger wiki.

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