Low cost solutions to pairing issues in IEEE 802.15.4 networks

The last years have seen an important increase in the development and proliferation of wireless technologies. This success, mostly related to mobility and the relative ease with which wireless devices can be linked (no wires needed between parties), has affected consumer as well as industrial applications. There are however many areas that are still closed to the introduction of wireless systems. Among the factors that affect wireless acceptance, one can name security and the complexity often involved in setting up networks. Unlike wired systems, the extra confidence afforded by “seen wires” is not available in wireless systems, making it difficult for the users to know if communication occurs between legitimate parties. This places wireless technology before the need to introduce simple methods to improve the set up and authentication processes. These aspects are addressed by binding methods. It is our purpose in this document to present such solutions, and especially how they can be used in 802.15.4 based networks. We will mainly focus on solutions involving optical or RFID techniques. We will also suggest some improvements where needed

Natural group binding and cross-display object movement methods for wearable devices

As wearable devices become more popular, situations where there are multiple persons present with such devices will become commonplace. In these situations, wearable devices could support collaborative tasks and experiences between co-located persons through multi-user applications. We present an elicitation study that gathers from end users interaction methods for wearable devices for two common tasks in co-located interaction: group binding and cross-display object movement. We report a total of 154 methods collected from 30 participants. We categorize the methods based on the metaphor and modality of interaction, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each category based on qualitative and quantitative feedback given by the participants.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Studies on Multi-Device Usage Practices and Interaction Methods

People today commonly have multiple information devices, including smartphones, tablets, computers, home media centers, and other devices. As people have many devices, situations and workflows where several devices are combined and used together to accomplish a task have become usual. Groups of co-located persons may also join their information devices together for collaborative activities and experiences. While these developments towards computing with multiple devices offer many opportunities, they also create a need for interfaces and applications that support using multiple devices together.The overall goal of this doctoral thesis is to create new scientific knowledge to inform the design of future interfaces, applications, and technologies that better support multi-device use. The thesis belongs to the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. It contains five empirical studies with a total of 110 participants. The study results have been reported in five original publications. The thesis generally follows the design science research methodology.More specifically, this thesis addresses three research questions related to multidevice use. The first question investigates how people actually use multiple information devices together in their daily lives. The results provide a rich picture of everyday multi-device use, including the most common devices and their characteristic practices of use, a categorization of patterns of multi-device use, and an analysis of the process of determining which devices to use. The second question examines the factors that influence the user experience of multi-device interaction methods. The results suggest a set of experiential factors that should be considered when designing methods for multi-device interaction. The set of factors is based on comparative studies of alternative methods for two common tasks in multi-device interaction: device binding and cross-display object movement. The third question explores a more futuristic topic of multi-device interaction methods for wearable devices, focusing on the two most popular categories of wearable devices today: smartwatches and smartglasses. The results present a categorization of actions that people would naturally do to initiate interactions between their wearable devices based on elicitation studies with groups of participants.The results of this thesis advance the scientific knowledge of multi-device use in the domain of human-computer interaction research. The results can be applied in the design of novel interfaces, applications, and technologies that involve the use of multiple information devices

A proof-of-proximity framework for device pairing in ubiquitous computing environments

Ad hoc interactions between devices over wireless networks in ubiquitous computing environments present a security problem: the generation of shared secrets to initialize secure communication over a medium that is inherently vulnerable to various attacks. However, these ad hoc scenarios also offer the potential for physical security of spaces and the use of protocols in which users must visibly demonstrate their presence and/or involvement to generate an association. As a consequence, recently secure device pairing has had significant attention from a wide community of academic as well as industrial researchers and a plethora of schemes and protocols have been proposed, which use various forms of out-of-band exchange to form an association between two unassociated devices. These protocols and schemes have different strengths and weaknesses – often in hardware requirements, strength against various attacks or usability in particular scenarios. From ordinary user‟s point of view, the problem then becomes which to choose or which is the best possible scheme in a particular scenario. We advocate that in a world of modern heterogeneous devices and requirements, there is a need for mechanisms that allow automated selection of the best protocols without requiring the user to have an in-depth knowledge of the minutiae of the underlying technologies. Towards this, the main argument forming the basis of this dissertation is that the integration of a discovery mechanism and several pairing schemes into a single system is more efficient from a usability point of view as well as security point of view in terms of dynamic choice of pairing schemes. In pursuit of this, we have proposed a generic system for secure device pairing by demonstration of physical proximity. Our main contribution is the design and prototype implementation of Proof-of-Proximity framework along with a novel Co- Location protocol. Other contributions include a detailed analysis of existing device pairing schemes, a simple device discovery mechanism, a protocol selection mechanism that is used to find out the best possible scheme to demonstrate the physical proximity of the devices according to the scenario, and a usability study of eight pairing schemes and the proposed system

A Human-Verifiable Authentication Protocol Using Visible Laser Light

Securing wireless channels necessitates authenticating communication partners. For spontaneous interaction, authentication must be efficient and intuitive. One approach to create interaction and authentication methods that scale to using hundreds of services throughout the day is to rely on personal, trusted, mobile devices to interact with the environment. Authenticating the resulting device-to-device interactions requires an out-of-band channel that is verifiable by the user. We present a protocol for creating such an out-of-band channel with visible laser light that is secure against man-in-the-middle attacks even when the laser transmission is not confidential. A prototype implementation shows that an appropriate laser channel can be constructed with simple off-the-shelf components. 1