Performance Analysis of Obfuscation Algorithm for Privacy-Preserving Land Certificates on a Decentralized Backbone

Indonesia’s shift toward digital land certificates introduces privacy and authenticity challenges due to the inclusion of personally identifiable information (PII) and the lack of tamper-evident verification mechanisms. These concerns have intensified following the enactment of Indonesia’s 2022 Personal Data Protection (PDP) Law, which mandates stricter controls over the publication and processing of PII. To address these issues, this study investigates six reversible string-level obfuscation methods—Blackout, Affine, Puzzle, XOR, RSA, and Scramble—to conceal PII while preserving the integrity of the land certificate. The obfuscation is implemented through a Python-based system that extracts sensitive data from fixed- coordinate zones in the PDF, applies the chosen transformation, and generates a keyfile for reversible deobfuscation. These modified certificates are then distributed using a decentralized ecosystem: obfuscated files are stored on IPFS, and their hashes are immutably logged on Ethereum via smart contracts. To assess the effectiveness of each method, we conducted performance tests with 100 iterations to measure obfuscation and deobfuscation time, memory usage, and scalability using Apache JMeter stress tests. The results reveal that lightweight methods like Puzzle and XOR offer high throughput with low resource demands, while RSA provides stronger confidentiality at the cost of higher latency and memory usage. The system sustained up to 580 concurrent users before latency degradation. This paper concludes by highlighting trade-offs between performance and security and recommends algorithm selection based on operational context and threat model.