Reducing Dependency on Middleware for Pull Based Active Services in LBS Systems

Abstract

The middleware is the most commonly used solution to address the location privacy. But it becomes a bottleneck in terms of system performance and availability as the entire client's service transactions are routed through the middleware to the actual Location Based Service Providers (LSP). The proposed architecture mainly targets a variety of applications where the availability of the services is probably more important than the location security. In the new flexible middleware based architecture the client and the LSPs can communicate directly. Autonomy on the client-server communication increases the possibility of communication even in the scenarios where the middleware is not available. But it also introduces authentication and security challenges to be addressed. The trusted middleware is used to generate the authentication certificates containing the Proxy Identity (also called Pseudonyms) to fulfill the authentication requirements at the LSP servers. The rest of transactions among the clients and the LSPs are accomplished independently. Further, the level of anonymity can be tuned by altering pseudonyms generation techniques i.e. "One-to-One", "One-to-Many" and "Many-to-One" depending on the type of the service and security requirements. It also attempts to maintain almost the same level of security for the targeted services.

Defending Location Privacy Using Zero Knowledge Proof Concept in Location Based Services

“…This work establishes the fact that the system proposed by authors [6,8] uses Zero knowledge proof technique for authentication and authorization in LBS domain. Some of the applications which can be handled efficiently by the proposed middleware architecture are near me area network, proximity search, turn by turn navigation etc.…”

“…Using the proposed architecture for these applications we achieve high availability, low response time, more security and reliability, excellent performance and scalability due to the direct communication to the LSPs in pull based services. A detailed description of advantages is given in [8]. One of the important contributions of this study is configurable levels of anonymity.…”

“…The authors proposed a solution [8], in which the client and the LSPs can directly communicate with the same level of location security, privacy and anonymity thus reducing dependency on middleware. Here the trusted middleware is used as certifying authority that generates authentication certificates which contains the Proxy Identity (also called Pseudonyms), and the services subscribed with validity period.…”