Secure Device Pairing based on a Visual Channel (Short Paper)

  • Authors:
  • Nitesh Saxena;Jan-Erik Ekberg;Kari Kostiainen;N. Asokan

  • Affiliations:
  • University of California, Irvine, USA;Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland;Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland;Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland

  • Venue:
  • SP '06 Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
  • Year:
  • 2006

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Recently several researchers and practitioners have begun to address the problem of how to set up secure communication between two devices without the assistance of a trusted third party. McCune, et al. [4] proposed that one device displays the hash of its public key in the form of a barcode, and the other device reads it using a camera. Mutual authentication requires switching the roles of the devices and repeating the above process in the reverse direction. In this paper, we show how strong mutual authentication can be achieved even with a unidirectional visual channel, without having to switch device roles. By adopting recently proposed improved pairing protocols, we propose how visual channel authentication can be used even on devices that have very limited displaying capabilities.