Hierarchical Trustworthy Authentication for Pervasive Computing

  • Authors:

  • Hannan Xiao;James A. Malcolm;Bruce Christianson;Ying Zhang

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, UK. Email: h.xiao@herts.ac.uk;School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, UK. Email: j.a.malcolm@herts.ac.uk;School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, UK. Email: b.christianson@herts.ac.uk;Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, UK. Email: yz282@cam.ac.uk

  • Venue:
  • MOBIQUITOUS '07 Proceedings of the 2007 Fourth Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking&Services (MobiQuitous)
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Conventional entity authentication is not enough to build a secure pervasive computing environment. Being sure that you are talking to the expected entity does not guarantee it is going to do what you expect him to do, and only that. This paper introduces a concept of "trustworthy authentication" in pervasive computing which is defined as entity authentication accompanied by an assurance of trustworthy behaviour of the authenticated entity. It discusses how to provide trustworthy authentication in pervasive computing using the example of a roaming customer wishing to print his email on a public printer. A two-level hierarchical trustworthy authentication scheme is proposed where local and higher-level authorization servers issue trustworthiness certificates after receiving trustworthiness records from the printer, signed by its users. The proposed scheme may be generalized for trustworthy authentication of security devices such as firewalls.