Hyperledger Fabric is a modular blockchain system. It has been designed to allow a known set of actors to participate and perform actions in a blockchain network (the so-called permissioned blockchain). Due to its modular nature, it can be deployed in many different configurations. Different deployment configurations of Hyperledger Fabric have different security implications for the operator of the network, as well its users.
At its core, Hyperledger Fabric is a public key infrastructure (PKI) system and thus it inherits the security (and complexity) associated with such systems. At the time of writing this book, Hyperledger Fabric v1.1 has been released.
The security aspects of designing and implementing a blockchain network has been discussed in earlier application chapters, we intend to give a broader as well as a more in-depth view of the security features of Hyperledger Fabric here.
We will be covering the following topics in this chapter:
- Design goals impacting security
- Hyperledger Fabric architecture recap
- Network bootstrap and governance – the first step towards security
- Strong identities – the key to the security of the Hyperledger Fabric network
- Chain code security
- Common security threats and how Hyperledger Fabric mitigates them
- Hyperledger Fabric and quantum computing
- General data protection regulation (GDPR) considerations