Junggab Son

Rethinking Vehicular Communications: Merging VANET with cloud computing

Despite the surge in Vehicular Ad Hoc NETwork (VANET) research, future high-end vehicles are expected to under-utilize the on-board computation, communication, and storage resources. Olariu et al. envisioned the next paradigm shift from conventional VANET to Vehicular Cloud Computing (VCC) by merging VANET with cloud computing. But to date, in the literature, there is no solid architecture for cloud computing from VANET standpoint. In this paper, we put forth the taxonomy of VANET based cloud computing. It is, to the best of our knowledge, the first effort to define VANET Cloud architecture. Additionally we divide VANET clouds into three architectural frameworks named Vehicular Clouds (VC), Vehicles using Clouds (VuC), and Hybrid Vehicular Clouds (HVC). We also outline the unique security and privacy issues and research challenges in VANET clouds.

Conditional privacy preserving security protocol for NFC applications

In recent years, various mobile terminals equipped with NFC (Near Field Communication) have been released. The combination of NFC with smart devices has led to widening the utilization range of NFC. It is expected to replace credit cards in electronic payment, especially. In this regard, security issues need to be addressed to vitalize NFC electronic payment. The NFC security standards currently being applied require the use of users public key at a fixed value in the process of key agreement. The relevance of the message occurs in the fixed elements such as the public key of NFC. An attacker can create a profile based on users public key by collecting the associated messages. Through the created profile, users can be exposed and their privacy can be compromised. In this paper, we propose conditional privacy protection methods based on pseudonyms to solve these problems. In addition, PDU (Protocol Data Unit) for conditional privacy is defined. Users can inform the other party that they will communicate according to the protocol proposed in this paper by sending the conditional privacy preserved PDU through NFC terminals. The proposed method succeeds in minimizing the update cost and computation overhead by taking advantage of the physical characteristics of NFC1.

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.

Maximum Lifetime Combined Barrier-Coverage of Weak Static Sensors and Strong Mobile Sensors

Recently, the concept of barrier-coverage of wireless sensor network has been introduced for various civilian and military defense applications. This paper studies the problem of how to organize hybrid sensor network, which consists of a number of energy-scarce ground sensors with homogenous initial battery level and energy-plentiful mobile sensors, to maximum the lifetime of barrier-coverage. Two key observations are (a) as the lifetime of each mobile sensor is much longer than that of the static ground sensors, each mobile sensor is capable of contributing multiple sensor barrier formations, and (b) no mobile sensor node can join two hybrid barriers which will be successively used to continuously protect the area of interest due to the moving delay. Based on these, we introduce a new maximum lifetime barrier-coverage problem in hybrid sensor network. We first propose a simple heuristic algorithm by combining existing ideas along with our own. Then, we design another efficient algorithm for the problem and prove that the lifetime of hybrid barrier constructed by this algorithm is at least three times greater than the existing one on average. Our simulation result shows that the second algorithm outperforms the first algorithm at least 33 percent and up to 100 percent.

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.

Conditional proxy re-encryption for secure big data group sharing in cloud environment.

Conditional PRE (CPRE) is a novel public key primitive which enables the group sharing of confidential data without revealing its plaintext or decryption key to outside the group member. Previously, several efforts are made to facilitate CPRE in group data sharing in cloud environment. The main drawback of the state-of-art CPRE schemes for this purpose is that whenever the group member changes, the originator of the data needs to download all of the existing data on the cloud, encrypt them again with a new condition value, and uploads them to the cloud. As a result, they are not suitable for secure big data sharing among group member in cloud environment. In this paper, we introduce a new CPRE called the outsourcing CPRE scheme (O-CPRE) which reduces the client overhead drastically. When the membership of the group changes, in O-CPRE, the originator only needs to select a new condition value and upload it to the cloud. In addition, O-CPRE will move a part of client overhead at the initial setup stage and at the decryption of each message from the client to the cloud. As a result, O-CPRE is much more suitable for secure big data sharing in cloud environment than the other existing schemes.

PVR: a novel PVR scheme for content protection

Personal Video Recorders (PVR) are attractive to users because they enables us to watch content without facing time-restrictions. On the other hand, enterprises want to store content safely by using a proper encryption method to prevent a loss of their profits due to the leakage of content through PVR. Thus, it is necessary for enterprises to apply a method that effectively hinders the leakage of content while guaranteeing a certain level of QoS (Quality of Service). In this paper, we proposed a secure PVR method which uses a chipset-pairing, a form of advanced CAS. The proposed scheme has its merit in the fact that it can be directly usable for systems which use a chipset-pairing. Also, it generates a reasonable overhead to users and is effective to the leakage of content.

A Hybrid Trust Management Framework for Vehicular Social Networks

This paper addresses the trust management problem in the emerging Vehicular Social Network (VSN). VSN is an evolutionary integration of Vehicular Ad hoc NETwork (VANET) and Online Social Networks (OSN). The application domain of VSN inherits the features of its parental VANET and OSN, providing value-added services and applications to its consumers, i.e. passengers and drivers. However, the immature infrastructure of VSN is vulnerable to security and privacy threats while information sharing, and hard to realize in the mass of vehicles. Therefore, in this paper, we particularly advocate for communication trust establishment and management during information exchange in VSN. First, we establish functional architectural frameworks for VSN that are based on the underlying applications. Second, based on these frameworks, we propose two trust establishment and management solutions, i.e. email-based social trust and social networks-based trust, to target different sets of applications. Third, we discuss the contemporary research challenges in VSN. Our proposed scheme is a stepping stone towards the secure and trustworthy realization of this technology.