Enforcing Access Control in Distributed Version Control Systems

2026-07-31

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of fine-grained access control in decentralized version control systems (DVCS), which stems from their inherently distributed nature. To overcome this limitation, the authors propose Disac—the first decentralized access control scheme that enables autonomous permission management without relying on a central server, allowing each entity to independently govern read and write permissions over its data. Disac innovatively integrates attribute-based encryption (ABE) and attribute-based signature (ABS) to enforce fine-grained authorization for read and write operations, respectively, while maintaining compatibility with existing Git client architectures. The proposed solution seamlessly integrates into current DVCS infrastructures, offering a practical, secure, and deployable approach that balances strong access control with real-world usability.

Abstract

Version control systems (VCS), including central VCS (CVCS) and distributed VCS (DVCS), are widely adopted to manage the changes to various types of data. Unlike the CVCS where all the entities obtain the data from the server and the access control is enforced with the cooperation of the server, each entity in the DVCS stores the entire repository, obtains the repository shared by any entity and is free to share its own repository. Therefore, existing access control schemes for CVCS are not suitable for DVCS. In this paper, we present a distributed access control scheme (Disac) for DVCS. Disac makes each entity have full control over its data, while the access control is enforced at each entity independently. We adopt Attribute-based Encryption (ABE) and Attribute-based Signature (ABS) to achieve the read and write permission control. The analysis of the Git client demonstrates that Disac can be integrated easily.

Problem

• Distributed Version Control Systems
• Access Control
• Attribute-based Encryption
• Attribute-based Signature
• Git

Innovation

• Distributed Access Control
• Attribute-based Encryption
• Attribute-based Signature
• Distributed Version Control System
• Git Integration