Munirul M. Haque

An Omnipresent Formal Trust Model (FTM) for Pervasive Computing Environment

Mutual collaboration plays a vital role in sharing of resources in an ad hoc network of handheld devices in a pervasive computing environment. Effective sharing of resources is facilitating tiny pervasive devices to benefit from situations which otherwise would not have been possible due to several limitations (such as poor storage and computational capability). An unavoidable consequence of this aspect is opening the door for security breaches. Trust is the weapon which is used to fight against security violations by restricting malicious nodes from participating in any interaction. Here, we present a context specific and reputation based trust model along with a brief survey of current trust models. To the best of our knowledge, our model is the first formal omnipresent trust model for pervasive computing, which can be used universally. This paper presents a recommendation protocol that provides a multi-hop recommendation capability and a flexible behavioral model to handle interactions. This paper also illustrates the implementation and evaluation of the omnipresent formal trust model.

Design, analysis, and deployment of omnipresent Formal Trust Model (FTM) with trust bootstrapping for pervasive environments

The rapid decrease in the size of mobile devices, coupled with an increase in capability, has enabled a swift proliferation of small and very capable devices into our daily lives. With such a prevalence of pervasive computing, the interaction among portable devices needs to be continuous and invisible to device users. As these devices become better connected, collaboration among them will play a vital role in sharing resources in an ad-hoc manner. The sharing of resources works as a facilitator for pervasive devices. However, this ad hoc interaction among devices provides the potential for security breaches. Trust can fight against such security violations by restricting malicious nodes from participating in interactions. Therefore, we need a unified trust relationship model between entities, which captures both the needs of the traditional computing world and the world of pervasive computing where the continuum of trust is based on identity, physical context or a combination of both. Here, we present a context specific and reputation-based trust model along with a brief survey of trust models suitable for peer-to-peer and ad-hoc environments. This paper presents a multi-hop recommendation protocol and a flexible behavioral model to handle interactions. One other contribution of this paper is the integration of an initial trust model; this model categorizes services or contexts in different security levels based on their security needs, and these security needs are considered in trust bootstrapping. The other major contribution of this paper is a simple method of handling malicious recommendations. This paper also illustrates the implementation and evaluation of our proposed formal trust model.

Security in Pervasive Computing: Current Status and Open Issues

Million of wireless device users are ever on the move, becoming more dependent on their PDAs, smart phones, and other handheld devices. With the advancement of pervasive computing, new and unique capabilities are available to aid mobile societies. The wireless nature of these devices has fostered a new era of mobility. Thousands of pervasive devices are able to arbitrarily join and leave a network, creating a nomadic environment known as a pervasive ad hoc network. However, mobile devices have vulnerabilities, and some are proving to be challenging. Security in pervasive computing is the most critical challenge. Security is needed to ensure exact and accurate confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and access control, to name a few. Security for mobile devices, though still in its infancy, has drawn the attention of various researchers. As pervasive devices become incorporated in our day-to-day lives, security will increasingly becoming a common concern for all users - - though for most it will be an afterthought, like many other computing functions. The usability and expansion of pervasive computing applications depends greatly on the security and reliability provided by the applications. At this critical juncture, security research is growing. This paper examines the recent trends and forward thinking investigation in several fields of security, along with a brief history of previous accomplishments in the corresponding areas. Some open issues have been discussed for further investigation.

Wellness assistant: a virtual wellness assistant using pervasive computing

The number of people over age 65 will almost double by 2030 and as they age, they generally prefer to remain in their home or go to a nursing home. There are a variety of reasons for their decision, such as convenience or a need for security or privacy. So, it is time to break through the physical boundaries of hospitals, and bring the hospital information to the homes of the elderly rather than bringing elderly folks to the hospital. Despite growing requests by people to be able to take a more active part in managing their own health, wireless or internet-based healthcare devices have not been accepted for use in this area. This is probably due to the reluctance of this age group to make use of new technology, as well as the lack of reliable, individualized, or user friendly interfaces. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of developing Wellness Assistant (WA), software which is looking to solve some of these problems. The Assistant will use pervasive computing technologies because of the availability of inexpensive handheld devices such as PDAs, cell phones, and wrist watches with short range wireless capabilities. The WA can also be used by people with obesity, diabetes, or high blood pressure, conditions which need constant monitoring.

Self-healing for autonomic pervasive computing

Self-healing is one of the main challenges to growing autonomic pervasive computing. Fault detection and recovery are the main steps of self-healing. Due to the characteristics of pervasive computing the self-healing becomes difficult. In this paper, the challenges of self-healing have been addressed and an approach to develop a self-healing service for autonomic pervasive computing is presented. The self-healing service has been developed and integrated into the middleware named MARKS+ (Middleware Adaptability for Resource discovery, Knowledge usability, and Self-healing). The self-healing approach is being evaluated on a test bed of PDAs. An application is being developed by using the proposed service.

S-MARKS: A Middleware Secure by Design for the Pervasive Computing Environment

Portable devices have become day-to-day necessities in our lives. These devices have several critical constraints due to their small size and environment, relying on the importance of middleware in the pervasive computing environment. The significance of security is well-known in this field and it is long overdue to have middleware in the pervasive computing environment that deals with security. In this paper, we present S-MARKS, middleware that is secure by design. Features of S-MARKS include validating devices, discovering resources, modeling trust, handling malicious recommendations, and avoiding privacy violation

Service sharing with trust in pervasive environment: now it's time to break the jinx

In such as a highly dynamic and open environment, it has become a challenge to deploy multiple context-sensitive services due to the unwillingness of service provider to share resources. This apprehension to share resources stems mainly from a lack of trust. Sometimes infrastructure plays pivotal role to solve this issue with dynamic access control to replace traditional static policies. But when it comes to effective resource sharing in an infrastructure-less environment we face problems such as poor storage and computational capability. In this paper, we have developed a lightweight and distributed trust model based on recommendation, which will guarantee that service providers can securely share an unlimited number of resources, limited only by their hardware and bandwidth limitations. The multi-hop recommendation protocol incorporates a flexible behavioral model to handle interactions during service sharing and usage. This protocol will also assess risk using recommendations from context-sensitive services, in the trust framework, to help ensure smooth access to resources and services.

e-ESAS: improving quality of life for breast cancer patients in developing countries

In this paper, we present e-ESAS, a mobile phone based remote monitoring tool for patients with palliative care need, carefully designed for developing countries. Most of the current remote monitoring systems are complex, obtrusive and expensive resulting in a system unsuitable to deploy in low-income countries. We here describe evolution and performance of e-ESAS within the contexts of breast cancer patients as these patients require management of pain and other symptoms. Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) was developed to capture the important parameters where patients themselves report their level of ten symptoms. Our e-ESAS improves the current system by reducing visits by patients to clinics, providing more flexibility to both doctors and patients, improving the quality of data, accommodating doctors to fine tune interventions, and providing a convenient representation of data to doctors. User interface was designed according to feedbacks from users resulting in a UI with better performance. The system is intended to provide a platform for future research as large amount of real data is being accumulated from the deployment. The system demonstrates the feasibility of accessing quality health care through cell phones by rural, poor patients in developing countries. The system enables doctors to serve more patients as it saves time for doctors, requiring less time to view patient information.

An Authentication based Lightweight Device Discovery (ALDD) Model for Pervasive Computing Environment

Inter device dependency and mutual cooperation of devices is a must in pervasive computing environment. This is to overcome the barriers posed by several shortcomings of pervasive environment including limited memory and computational capability, poor battery power etc. The knowledge of valid, authenticated devices is vital in this scenario to ensure security and privacy. At the same time we have to ensure that no malicious device is interacting with any other valid device. As an attempt to address this issue, we have modified the well known LPN (Learning Parity with Noise) based H-C (Human-Computer) [1-2] authentication protocol. In this paper, we have shown it to be feasible and realistic in the trusted device discovery mechanism of pervasive ad hoc network. Along with two separate models for both large and small networks, the paper presents several possible attack scenarios with their solutions.

A formal context specific trust model (FTM) for multimedia and ubiquitous computing environment

In order to ensure secure sharing of resources in an ad-hoc network of handheld devices in a multimedia and ubiquitous computing environment, mutual collaboration is essential. However, the limitations, such as poor storage and computational capability of these multimedia and ubiquitous devices stand as the bottleneck for effective sharing of resources. As a result of this drawback, the adversaries are obtaining access to the new doors for security breaches. Mutual Trust is the weapon used to combat security violations by restricting malicious devices from participating in any interaction in such an open and dynamic environment. In this paper, we present a context-specific and reputation-based trust model along with a brief survey and a comparative study of the existing trust models found in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, our model is the first formal trust model for multimedia and ubiquitous computing, which incorporates multi-hop recommendation capability and flexible behavioral model to handle interactions among devices. The other major contribution of this universal trust model is a simple protocol for circumventing malicious recommendations and handling them for achieving accuracy. This paper also illustrates the implementation and evaluation detailed of our proposed omnipresent formal trust model.