Logchain: Blockchain-assisted Log Storage

TL;DR

Logchain is a blockchain-based system designed to securely store cloud logs, ensuring their immutability and integrity to prevent tampering and facilitate reliable incident analysis.

Contribution

The paper introduces Logchain, a novel hierarchical blockchain system that cryptographically seals and stores logs from multiple providers for tamper-proof log management.

Findings

Provides an immutable log storage solution using blockchain technology.

Ensures tamper detection and data integrity for cloud logs.

Facilitates reliable incident investigation and compliance.

Abstract

During the normal operation of a Cloud solution, no one usually pays attention to the logs except technical department, which may periodically check them to ensure that the performance of the platform conforms to the Service Level Agreements. However, the moment the status of a component changes from acceptable to unacceptable, or a customer complains about accessibility or performance of a platform, the importance of logs increases significantly. Depending on the scope of the issue, all departments, including management, customer support, and even the actual customer, may turn to logs to find out what has happened, how it has happened, and who is responsible for the issue. The party at fault may be motivated to tamper the logs to hide their fault. Given the number of logs that are generated by the Cloud solutions, there are many tampering possibilities. While tamper detection solution can be used to detect any changes in the logs, we argue that critical nature of logs calls for immutability. In this work, we propose a blockchain-based log system, called Logchain, that collects the logs from different providers and avoids log tampering by sealing the logs cryptographically and adding them to a hierarchical ledger, hence, providing an immutable platform for log storage.