Evading cellular data monitoring with human movement networks

  • Authors:
  • Adam J. Aviv;Micah Sherr;Matt Blaze;Jonathan M. Smith

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Pennsylvania;University of Pennsylvania;University of Pennsylvania;University of Pennsylvania

  • Venue:
  • HotSec'10 Proceedings of the 5th USENIX conference on Hot topics in security
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Cellular networks are centrally administered, enabling service providers and their governments to conduct system-wide monitoring and censorship of mobile communication. This paper presents HUMANETS, a fully decentralized, smartphone-to-smartphone (and hence human-to-human) message passing scheme that permits unmonitored message communication even when all cellular traffic is inspected. HUMANET message routing protocols exploit human mobility patterns to significantly increase communication efficiency while limiting the exposure of messages to mobile service providers. Initial results from tracedriven simulation show that 85% of messages reach their intended destinations while using orders of magnitude less network capacity than naïve epidemic flooding techniques.