8891155
The Claim Tool Kit for ad hoc recognition of peer entities
In ubiquitous/pervasive computing environments, it is envisaged that computing elements--entities--will start interacting in an ad hoc fashion. The peer-to-peer (p2p) paradigm is appealing for such types of interaction especially with JXTA, which supports the development of reusable p2p building blocks, which facilitate implementation on any smart device. However, the inability to rely on a centralised authentication infrastructure, the openness of the environment and the absence of an administrator (it is assumed to be too expensive to have a skilled administrator at hand due to the large number of peers) challenge the use of legacy authentication mechanisms.Supporting spontaneous interactions among previously unknown entities requires dynamic enrolment of strangers and unknown entities. Entity recognition (ER) is a process that is carried out each time an interaction happens between entities in order to dynamically recognise previously met entities.In this paper, we present the Claim Tool Kit (CTK), a Java-based implementation of ER: entities exchange messages, called Claims, and rely on their associated clues to evaluate the level of confidence in recognition.The CTK employs advanced features available with Java, such as JXTA and Java Cryptography and Security Architectures. We show that the CTK needs performance results on these features in order to increase the level of auto-configuration of the CTK. We describe how to obtain performance assessment for some of these new features. Finally, we explain how the CTK can be instrumented to take into account performance assessment. By analysing the evaluation results, the applicability of these advanced Java-based technologies for peer entity recognition is assessed.
18687186
Trading Privacy for Trust
Both privacy and trust relate to knowledge about an entity. However, there is an inherent conflict between trust and privacy: the more knowledge a first entity knows about a second entity, the more accurate should be the trustworthiness assessment; the more knowledge is known about this second entity, the less privacy is left to this entity. This conflict needs to be addressed because both trust and privacy are essential elements for a smart working world. The solution should allow the benefit of adjunct trust when entities interact without too much privacy loss. We propose to achieve the right trade-off between trust and privacy by ensuring minimal trade of privacy for the required trust. We demonstrate how transactions made under different pseudonyms can be linked and careful disclosure of such links fulfils this right trade-off.
34386518
Privacy Recovery with Disposable Email Addresses
Disposable e-mail address (DEA) services are a privacy recovery mechanism for the growing spam problem. However, this problem is clearly more complex than simply closing DEA; as the rolling e-mail address protocols (REAP) system demonstrates, recovery approaches must accommodate different normal states.
14146996
Cryptographic access control in a distributed file system
Traditional access control mechanisms rely on a reference monitor to mediate access to protected resources. Reference monitors are inherently centralized and existing attempts to distribute the functionality of the reference monitor suffer from problems of scalability.Cryptographic access control is a new distributed access control paradigm designed for a global federation of information systems. It defines an implicit access control mechanism, which relies exclusively on cryptography to provide confidentiality and integrity of data managed by the system. It is particularly designed to operate in untrusted environments where the lack of global knowledge and control are defining characteristics.The proposed mechanism has been implemented in a distributed file system, which is presented in this paper along with a preliminary evaluation of the proposed mechanism.
2275333
Risk probability estimating based on clustering
Ubiquitous computing environments are highly dynamic, with new unforeseen circumstances and constantly changing environments, which introduces new risks that cannot be assessed through traditional means of risk analysis. Mobile entities in a ubiquitous computing environment require the ability to perform an autonomous assessment of the risk incurred by a specific interaction with another entity in a given context. This assessment will allow a mobile entity to decide whether sufficient evidence exists to mitigate the risk and allow the interaction to proceed. Such evidence might include records of prior experiences, recommendations from a trusted entity or the reputation of the other entity. We propose a dynamic mechanism for estimating the risk probability of a certain interaction in a given environment using hybrid neural networks. We argue that traditional risk assessment models from the insurance industry do not directly apply to ubiquitous computing environments. Instead, we propose a dynamic mechanism for risk assessment, which is based on pattern matching, classification and prediction procedures. This mechanism uses an estimator of risk probability, which is based on the automatic clustering of defining features of the environment and the other entity, which helps avoid subjective judgments as much as possible.
7607582
Trust enhanced ubiquitous payment without too much privacy loss
Computational models of trust have been proposed for use in ubicomp environments for deciding whether to allow customers to pay with an e-purse or not. In order to build trust in a customer, a means to link transactions using the same e-purse is required. Roughly, trust is a result of knowledge. As the number of transactions increases, the resulting increase in knowledge about the user of the e-purse threatens privacy due to global profiling. We present a scheme (and its prototype) that mitigates this loss of privacy without forbidding the use of trust for smoothing payment by giving the opportunity to the user to divide trust (i.e. transactions) according to context (e.g. location, user's current activity or subset of shops).
3055454
Temporal statement modifiers
A wide range of database applications manage time-varying data. Many temporal query languages have been proposed, each one the result of many carefully made yet subtly interacting design decisions. In this article we advocate a different approach to articulating a set of requirements, or desiderata, that directly imply the syntactic structure and core semantics of a temporal extension of an (arbitrary) nontemporal query language. These desiderata facilitate transitioning applications from a nontemporal query language and data model, which has received only scant attention thus far.
The paper then introduces the notion of statement modifiers that provide a means of systematically adding temporal support to an existing query language. Statement modifiers apply to all query language statements, for example, queries, cursor definitions, integrity constraints, assertions, views, and data manipulation statements. We also provide a way to systematically add temporal support to an existing implementation. The result is a temporal query language syntax, semantics, and implementation that derives from first principles.
We exemplify this approach by extending SQL-92 with statement modifiers. This extended language, termed ATSQL, is formally defined via a denotational-semantics-style mapping of temporal statements to expressions using a combination of temporal and conventional relational algebraic operators.
1348801
Using differential technlques to efficiently support transaction time
We present an architecture for query processing in the relational model extended with transaction time. The architecture integrates standard query optimization and computation techniques with new differential computation techniques. Differential computation computes a query incrementally or decrementally from the cahced and indexed results of previous computations. The use of differential computation techniques is essential in order to provide efficient processing of queries that access very large temporal relations. Alternative query plans are integrated into a state transition network, where the state space includes backlogs of base relations, cached results from previous computations, a cache index, and intermediate results; the transitions include standard relational algebra operators, operators for constructing differential files, operators for differential computation, and combined operators. A rule set is presented to prune away parts of state transition networks that are not promising, and dynamic programming techniques are used to identify the optimal plans from the remaining state transition networks. An extended logical access path serves as a “structuring” index on the cached results and contains, in addition, vital statistics for the query optimization process (including statistics about base relations, backlogs, and queries-previously computed and cached, previously computed, or just previously estimated).
16280716
Indexing of moving objects for location-based services
Visionaries predict that the Internet will soon extend to billions of wireless devices, or objects, a substantial fraction of which will offer their changing positions to location-based services. This paper assumes an Internet-service scenario where objects that have not reported their position within a specified duration of time are expected to no longer be interested in, or of interest to, the service. Due to the possibility of many "expiring" objects, a highly dynamic database results. The paper presents an R-tree based technique for the indexing of the current positions of such objects. Different types of bounding regions are studied, and new algorithms are provided for maintaining the tree structure. Performance experiments indicate that, when compared to the approach where the objects are not assumed to expire, the new indexing technique can improve search performance by a factor of two or more without sacrificing update performance.
616587
Querying the trajectories of on-line mobile objects
Position data is expected to play a central role in a wide range of mobile computing applications, including advertising, leisure, safety, security, tourist, and traffic applications. Applications such as these are characterized by large quantities of wirelessly Internet-worked, position-aware mobile objects that receive services where the objects' position is essential. The movement of an object is captured via sampling, resulting in a trajectory consisting of a sequence of connected line segments for each moving object. This paper presents a technique for querying these trajectories. The technique uses indices for the processing of spatiotemporal range queries on trajectories. If object movement is constrained by the presence of infrastructure, e.g., lakes, park areas, etc., the technique is capable of exploiting this to reduce the range query, the purpose being to obtain better query performance. Specifically, an algorithm is proposed that segments the original range query based on the infrastructure contained in its range. The applicability and limitations of the proposal are assessed via empirical performance studies with varying datasets and parameter settings.
13889796
Collaborative Spatial Data Sharing Among Mobile Lightweight Devices
Mobile devices are increasingly being equipped with wireless peerto-peer (P2P) networking interfaces, rendering the sharing of data among mobile devices feasible and beneficial. In comparison to the traditional client/server wireless channel, the P2P channels have considerably higher bandwidth.Motivated by these observations, we propose a collaborative spatial data sharing scheme that exploits the P2P capabilities of mobile devices. Using carefully maintained routing tables, this scheme enables mobile devices not only to use their local storage for query processing, but also to collaborate with nearby mobile peers to exploit their data. This scheme is capable of reducing the cost of the communication between mobile clients and the server as well as the query response time. The paper details the design of the data sharing scheme, including its routing table maintenance, query processing and update handling. An analytical cost model sensitive to user mobility is proposed to guide the storage content replacement and routing table maintenance. The results of extensive simulation studies based on an implementation of the scheme demonstrate that the scheme is efficient in processing location dependent queries and is robust to data updates.