CredSSI: Enhancing Security and Privacy with Self-Sovereign Identities Approach

The Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) concept is the latest solution to emerge as an Identity Management model. Unlike other traditional models, an SSI-based system places the user at the center of the system, so that the user is the sole owner and manager of his or her identity information. This idea is very much in line with the recommendations and regulations that are emerging in the European Union, which is trying to promote the creation of a secure Digital Identity ecosystem, in which users manage their credentials through a personal wallet. This paper presents CredSSI, a tool that implements an SSI model for Identity Management in an agri-food application platform in a European project (DIVINE) and that allows performing user authentication and authorization functions. In the proposed system, user roles and permissions are managed using Verifiable Credentials, which are signed by the owners of the services. In addition, the implementation of the SSI model has been done by developing 3 Smart Contracts (one for each actor of the SSI model: holder, issuer, and verifier) in a private Ethereum network, which acts as a Verifiable Data Registry.