Towards Trustworthy Kiosk Computing

Abstract

We present a system in which a user leverages a personal mobile device to establish trust on a public computing device, or kiosk, prior to revealing personal information to that kiosk. We have designed and implemented a protocol by which the mobile device determines the identity and integrity of the software running on the kiosk. A similar protocol simultaneously allows a kiosk owner to verify that the kiosk is running only approved software. Our system combines a number of emerging security technologies, including the Trusted Platform Module, the Integrity Measurement Architecture, and new support in x86 processors for establishing a dynamic root of trust. In ongoing work, we plan to use virtual machines to support the important case where the user wishes to run personal software on the kiosk. We are also continuing to explore several open issues we have identified surrounding trust in a kiosk scenario.Eighth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications 1550-6193/07 $25.00

Practical security for rural internet kiosks

“…Previous work on securing public computing infrastructure like Internet kiosks has focused on the use of smartphones to establish trust in a computing platform [4] or to offload the processing of sensitive information [2,8,11], and the use of lightweight cryptosystems such as Hierarchical Identity-based Encryption (HIBE) to protect kiosk user data [1,7,9]. Unfortunately, challenges posed by rural kiosks, specifically (a) the absence of specialized hardware features such as Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) [15] or a modifiable BIOS in older recycled PCs, (b) the potential use of DTN, (c) the absence of a production-ready implementation of HIBE and (d) the limited availability of smartphones in most developing regions make these approaches difficult, if not impossible, to implement in our scenario.…”

“…The only robust solution is shutting down a kiosk terminal when a user logs out and training users to boot the kiosk terminal before logging in. Currently proposed techniques for verifying the integrity of public computing platforms such as kiosk terminals [4] require the use of trusted mobile computing devices and the presence of specialized hardware in kiosk terminals (e.g., TPMs), assumptions which will likely not be reasonable in developing regions for quite some time. The use of a scheme such as that proposed by Surie et al [12], whereby users boot terminals from a trusted USB memory stick before logging in as a means of verifying the integrity of the terminal's software, is precluded by the use of recycled PCs as terminals.…”

“…In some approaches [4,12], a user queries the proxy about its state and verifies that this state is trustworthy. These approaches require that the user has a trusted device to execute a query.…”

Improving direction-giving through utilization of an RFID-enabled kiosk

“…The problem with such systems is the privacy concerns they present. Various methods have been utilized to protect the privacy of the user such as personal headsets for viewing personal content in tandem with the kiosk (Eaddy, Blasko, Babcock, & Feiner, 2004) and mobile devices for viewing this information in relation to the kiosk (Garriss, et al, 2006). Other tactics are also discussed with regards to kiosk placement to minimize the risk of eavesdroppers (Maguire, 1999).…”

Trusted Computing Serving an Anonymity Service

“…Garriss et al [10] are describing an Internet kiosk scenario based on the IBM's Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) [21]. IMA extends a normal Linux with trusted computing functionality.…”