In recent years, location of mobile devices has become an important factor. Mobile device users can easily access various customized applications from the service providers based on the current physical location information. Nonetheless, it is a significant challenge in distributed architectures for users to prove their presence at a particular location in a privacy-protected and secured manner. So far, researchers have proposed multiple schemes to implement a secure location proof collection mechanism. However, such location proof schemes are subject to tampering and not resistant to collusion attacks. Additionally, the location authority providing a location proof is assumed to be honest at all times. In this paper, we present the fundamental requirements of any location proof generation scheme, and illustrate the potential attacks possible in such non-federated environments. Based on our observations, we introduce a concept of witness oriented endorsements, and describe a collusion-resistant protocol for asserted location proofs. We provide an exhaustive security analysis of the proposed architecture, based on all possible collusion models among the user, location authority, and witness. We also present a prototype implementation and extensive experimental results to adjust different threshold values and illustrate the feasibility of deploying the protocol in regular devices for practical use.
Many applications require localized computation in order to ensure better performance, security, and lower costs. In recent years, the emergence of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices has caused a paradigm shift in computing and communication.IoT devices are making our physical environment and infrastructures smarter, bringing pervasive computing to the mainstream. With billions of such devices slated to be deployed in the next five years, we have the opportunity to utilize these devices in converting our physical environment into interactive, smart, and intelligent computing infrastructures. In this paper, we present Aura -a highly localized IoT based cloud computing model. Aura allows clients to create ad hoc clouds using the IoT and other computing devices in the nearby physical environment, while providing the flexibility of cloud computing. Aura provides localized computation capability from untapped computing resources. Computations done on Aura are highly flexible, giving clients full control to start, stop, migrate, and restart computations in nearby devices as the clients move between different physical locations. To demonstrate the feasibility of Aura, we have ported a lightweight version of MapReduce to run on IoT devices, and evaluated its performance.
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