System Support for Security and Privacy in Pervasive Computing

One of the main goals of the pervasive computing domain is to provide the user with task support for everyday tasks. This task support should be realized by pervasive applications that are seamlessly integrated in the environment, for example embedded into devices such as everyday objects. To automate configuration, context information is shared between these devices. The shared context can contain private information that should not be made public. System support, which helps to develop pervasive applications, should therefore contain mechanisms that utilize security and privacy methods when handling context. Pervasive applications can then use these mechanisms and create pervasive environments while preserving the user's privacy.

Here, we show how context information can be processed and queried in a privacy-preserving manner. By securing the authenticity and integrity of context information and creating a secure context distribution algorithm, we show how pervasive applications can use and share context securely. Second, we introduce secure role assignment as a mechanism for environment adaptation which is built on context information. Similar to context, roles need to be protected and secured during distribution. Additionally, we add system support for secure roles which can be used for role-based access control by pervasive applications. Third, we create a secure key-exchange mechanism that can be used to secure the communication between users and devices. This is an essential step that needs to be performed before any private information can be shared among them. Fourth, we introduce a framework for the automatic generation of a privacy policy. This framework creates an individual privacy policy that can be used to share context between users, devices or applications while preserving the user's will with regard to context privacy.