Fizza Abbas

TIaaS: Secure Cloud-assisted Traffic Information Dissemination in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

In the recent past, a new concept termed as VANET-based clouds evolved from traditional VANET incorporating both VANET and cloud computing technologies in order to provide vehicle drivers, passengers, and consumers with safe, reliable, and infotainment-rich services while driving on the roads. In this paper, we use a framework of VANET-based clouds proposed by Hussain et al. namely VuC (VANET using Clouds) and define another layer TIaaS (Traffic Information as a Service) atop the cloud computing stack. TIaaS layer provides vehicular nodes (more precisely subscribers) with fine-grained traffic information in a secure way. Additionally our proposed scheme provides security, privacy, and conditional anonymity which are of prime concern in VANET clouds.

Vehicle Witnesses as a Service: Leveraging Vehicles as Witnesses on the Road in VANET Clouds

Inspired by the dramatic evolution of VANE clouds, this paper proposes a new VANET-cloud service called VWaaS (Vehicle Witnesses as a Service) in which vehicles moving on the road serve as anonymous witnesses of designated events such as a terrorist attack or a deadly accident. When confronted the events, a group of vehicles with mounted cameras collaborate with roadside stationary cameras to take pictures of the site of interest (SoI) around them, and send the pictures to the cloud infrastructure anonymously. The pictures are sent to the cloud in a way that the privacy of the senders can be protected, and kept by the cloud for future investigation. However, for the case that the pictures are used as an evidence of court trial, we made the privacy protection to be conditional and thus can be revoked by authorized entity(s) if necessary.

Using public buses as mobile gateways in vehicular clouds

Recently Vehicular Ad Hoc NETwork (VANET) evolved to a rather more application and services-rich infrastructure referred to as VANET-based clouds. However the initial deployment stage of VANET is going to be crucial due to lack of proper infrastructure. In this paper, based on the predictability of time and space of the public buses in urban scenario, we use these buses as mobile gateways among vehicles on the road, VANET authorities, and cloud infrastructure. We consider data aggregation as a use-case for our proposed scheme where buses collect beacons and service requests from vehicles and send it to cloud, whereas cloud provides services to vehicles through buses. Additionally a real-time road network is considered in Seoul, South Korea where the public buses provide perfect connectivity among other vehicles.

Privacy-aware route tracing and revocation games in VANET-based clouds

The foreseen dream of reliable, safe, and comfortable driving experience is yet to become reality since automobile industries are testing their waters for VANET (Vehicular Ad Hoc NETwork) deployment. But nevertheless, security and privacy issues have been the root cause of hindrance in VANET deployment. Recently, VANET evolved to VANET-based clouds as a result of resources-rich high-end cars. Soon after, Hussain et al. defined different architectural frameworks for VANET-based clouds. In this paper, we aim at a specific framework namely VuC (VANET using Clouds) where VANET and CC (Cloud Computing) cooperate with each other in order to provide VANET users (more precisely subscribers) with services. We propose a lightweight privacy-aware revocation and route tracing mechanism for VuC. Beacons broadcasted by vehicles are stored in cloud infrastructure as cooperation from VANET and after processing, cloud provides VANET subscribers with services. Revocation authorities can revoke and trace the path taken by the target node for a specified timespan by exploiting the beacons stored in the cloud. Our proposed scheme is secure, preserves conditional privacy, and is computationally less expensive than the previously proposed schemes.

A Hierarchical Privacy Preserving Pseudonymous Authentication Protocol for VANET

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a technology that enables smart vehicles to communicate with each other and form a mobile network. VANET facilitates users with improved traffic efficiency and safety. Authenticated communication becomes one of the prime requirements of VANET. However, authentication may reveal a users personal information such as identity or location, and therefore, the privacy of an honest user must be protected. This paper proposes an efficient and practical pseudonymous authentication protocol with conditional privacy preservation. Our protocol proposes a hierarchy of pseudonyms based on the time period of their usage. We propose the idea of primary pseudonyms with relatively longer time periods that are used to communicate with semi-trusted authorities and secondary pseudonyms with a smaller life time that are used to communicate with other vehicles. Most of the current pseudonym-based approaches are based on certificate revocation list (CRL) that causes significant communication and storage overhead or group-based approaches that are computationally expensive and suffer from group-management issues. These schemes also suffer from trust issues related to certification authority. Our protocol only expects an honest-but-curious behavior from otherwise fully trusted authorities. Our proposed protocol protects a users privacy until the user honestly follows the protocol. In case of a malicious activity, the true identity of the user is revealed to the appropriate authorities. Our protocol does not require maintaining a CRL and the inherent mechanism assures the receiver that the message and corresponding pseudonym are safe and authentic. We thoroughly examined our protocol to show its resilience against various attacks and provide computational as well as communicational overhead analysis to show its efficiency and robustness. Furthermore, we simulated our protocol in order to analyze the network performance and the results show the feasibility of our proposed protocol in terms of end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio.

Privacy Preserving Cloud-Based Computing Platform (PPCCP) for Using Location Based Services

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is an emerging trend which combines the benefits of cloud computing with the mobile devices. This new technology not only offers tremendous computing power and storage to the mobile devices with limited processing and storage capabilities but also increases the affordability and reliability. Despite providing various benefits, MCC is still in its early stages in providing trust guarantees to a user. Location-Based Services (LBS), on the other hand, are those services which operate on a users location to provide him/her services such as finding nearby restaurants, hospitals, bus terminal and ATMs, to name a few. While a users location is mandatory for LBS to work, it imposes serious threats to the users privacy. In this paper we propose a privacy preserving cloud-based computing architecture for using location-based services. On one hand, our architecture provides a secure mechanism for using LBS services anonymously while on the other hand it utilizes untrusted but fast and reliable cloud services for its implementation in an efficient and effective manner. Moreover, we provide various attack scenarios and show that how our architecture preserves the privacy of the user and is difficult to compromise.

PRISM: PRivacy-Aware Interest Sharing and Matching in Mobile Social Networks

In a profile matchmaking application of mobile social networks, users need to reveal their interests to each other in order to find the common interests. A malicious user may harm a user by knowing his personal information. Therefore, mutual interests need to be found in a privacy preserving manner. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy protection and interests sharing protocol referred to as PRivacy-aware Interest Sharing and Matching (PRISM). PRISM enables users to discover mutual interests without revealing their interests. Unlike existing approaches, PRISM does not require revealing the interests to a trusted server. Moreover, the protocol considers attacking scenarios that have not been addressed previously and provides an efficient solution. The inherent mechanism reveals any cheating attempt by a malicious user. PRISM also proposes the procedure to eliminate Sybil attacks. We analyze the security of PRISM against both passive and active attacks. Through implementation, we also present a detailed analysis of the performance of PRISM and compare it with existing approaches. The results show the effectiveness of PRISM without any significant performance degradation.

A two level privacy preserving pseudonymous authentication protocol for VANET

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is gaining significant popularity due to their role in improving traffic efficiency and safety. However, communication in VANET needs to be secure as well as authenticated. The vehicles in the VANET not only broadcast traffic messages known as beacons but also broadcast safety critical messages such as electronic emergency brake light (EEBL). Due to the openness of the network, a malicious vehicles can join the network and broadcast bogus messages that could result in accident. On one hand, a vehicle needs to be authenticated while on the other hand, its private data such as location and identity information must be prevented from misuse. In this paper, we propose an efficient pseudonymous authentication protocol with conditional privacy preservation to enhance the security of VANET. Most of the current protocols either utilize pseudonym based approaches with certificate revocation list (CRL) that causes significant communicational and storage overhead or group signature based approaches that are computationally expensive. Another inherent disadvantage is to have full trust on certification authorities, as these entities have complete user profiles. We present a new protocol that only requires honest-but-curious behavior from certification authority. We utilize a mechanism for providing a user with two levels of pseudonyms named as base pseudonym and short time pseudonyms to achieve conditional privacy. However, in case of revocation, there is no need to maintain the revocation list of pseudonyms. The inherent mechanism assures the receiver of the message about the authenticity of the pseudonym. In the end of the paper, we analyze our protocol by giving the communication cost as well as various attack scenarios to show that our approach is efficient and robust.

A Trustless Broker Based Protocol to Discover Friends in Proximity-Based Mobile Social Networks

Due to the rapid growth of online social networking and mobile devices, proximity based mobile social networks (PMSN) are gaining increasing popularity. PMSN refers to the social interaction among physically proximate mobile users where they directly communicate through Bluetooth/Wi-Fi. In PMSN, while making friends, users match their profiles in accordance with their interests. In this regard, preserving a user’s privacy is crucial during profile matching. Users use their profiles for matching. An attacker in user’s near proximity can learn these profiles’ values. This poses significant threat to a user’s privacy. In this regard, we propose a protocol to preserve user’s sensitive information. During discovery of friends in our protocol we use a broker that is an intermediate entity between interacting mobile users. Our protocol does not require trustworthy broker and hence no valuable information is given to broker that can cause a privacy threat. For secure computations paillier encryption has been used in our protocol. Furthermore, we implement and analyze our protocol to show its acceptable computational and communication cost.

A Step towards User Privacy while Using Location-Based Services

Abstract —Nowadays mobile users are using a popular service called Location-Based Services (LBS). LBS is very helpful for a mobile user in finding various Point of Interests (POIs) in their vicinity. To get these services, users must provide their personal information, such as user identity or current location, which severely risks the location privacy of the user. Many researchers are developing schemes that enable a user to use these LBS services anonymously, but these approaches have some limitations (i.e., either the privacy prevention mechanism is weak or the cost of the solution is too much). As such, we are presenting a robust scheme for mobile users that allows them to use LBS anonymously. Our scheme involves a client side application that interacts with an untrusted LBS server to find the nearest POI for a service required by a user. The scheme is not only efficient in its approach, but is also very practical with respect to the computations that are done on a client’s resource constrained device. With our scheme, not only can a client anonymously use LBS without any use of a trusted third party, but also a server’s database is completely secure from the client. We performed experiments by developing and testing an Android-based client side smartphone application to support our argument.