A Decentralised Digital Identity Architecture

Current architectures to validate, certify, and manage identity are based on centralised, top-down approaches that rely on trusted authorities and third-party operators. We approach the problem of digital identity starting from a human rights perspective, with a primary focus on identity systems in the developed world. We assert that individual persons must be allowed to manage their personal information in a multitude of different ways in different contexts and that to do so, each individual must be able to create multiple unrelated identities. Therefore, we first define a set of fundamental constraints that digital identity systems must satisfy to preserve and promote privacy as required for individual autonomy. With these constraints in mind, we then propose a decentralised, standards-based approach, using a combination of distributed ledger technology and thoughtful regulation, to facilitate many-to-many relationships among providers of key services. Our proposal for digital identity differs from others in its approach to trust in that we do not seek to bind credentials to each other or to a mutually trusted authority to achieve strong non-transferability. Because the system does not implicitly encourage its users to maintain a single aggregated identity that can potentially be constrained or reconstructed against their interests, individuals and organisations are free to embrace the system and share in its benefits.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

A policy-based security framework for ad-hoc networks

Imperial Users onl

Enabling Social Applications via Decentralized Social Data Management

An unprecedented information wealth produced by online social networks, further augmented by location/collocation data, is currently fragmented across different proprietary services. Combined, it can accurately represent the social world and enable novel socially-aware applications. We present Prometheus, a socially-aware peer-to-peer service that collects social information from multiple sources into a multigraph managed in a decentralized fashion on user-contributed nodes, and exposes it through an interface implementing non-trivial social inferences while complying with user-defined access policies. Simulations and experiments on PlanetLab with emulated application workloads show the system exhibits good end-to-end response time, low communication overhead and resilience to malicious attacks.Comment: 27 pages, single ACM column, 9 figures, accepted in Special Issue of Foundations of Social Computing, ACM Transactions on Internet Technolog

Agent fabrication and its implementation for agent-based electronic commerce

In the last decade, agent-based e-commerce has emerged as a potential role for the next generation of e-commerce. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become a serious consideration in this field. This paper proposes a new scheme named agent fabrication and elaborates its implementation in multi-agent systems based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) architecture. First, a conceptual structure is proposed for software agents carrying out e-commerce activities. Furthermore, agent module suitcase is defined to facilitate agent fabrication. With these definitions and facilities in the SAFER architecture, the formalities of agent fabrication are elaborated. In order to enhance the security of agent-based e-commerce, an infrastructure of agent authorization and authentication is integrated in agent fabrication. Our implementation and prototype applications show that the proposed agent fabrication scheme brings forth a potential solution for creating agents in agent-based e-commerce applications

Shibboleth-based access to and usage of grid resources

Security underpins grids and e-research. Without a robust, reliable and simple grid security infrastructure combined with commonly accepted security practices, large portions of the research community and wider industry will not engage. The predominant way in which security is currently addressed in the grid community is through public key infrastructures (PKI) based upon X.509 certificates to support authentication. Whilst PKIs address user identity issues, authentication does not provide fine grained control over what users are allowed to do on remote resources (authorization). In this paper we outline how we have successfully combined Shibboleth and advanced authorization technologies to provide simplified (from the user perspective) but fine grained security for access to and usage of grid resources. We demonstrate this approach through different security focused e-science projects being conducted at the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) at the University of Glasgow. We believe that this model is widely applicable and encourage the further uptake of e-science by non-IT specialists in the research communitie

Lex Informatica: The Formulation of Information Policy Rules through Technology

Historically, law and government regulation have established default rules for information policy, including constitutional rules on freedom of expression and statutory rights of ownership of information. This Article will show that for network environments and the Information Society, however, law and government regulation are not the only source of rule-making. Technological capabilities and system design choices impose rules on participants. The creation and implementation of information policy are embedded in network designs and standards as well as in system configurations. Even user preferences and technical choices create overarching, local default rules. This Article argues, in essence, that the set of rules for information flows imposed by technology and communication networks form a “Lex Informatica” that policymakers must understand, consciously recognize, and encourage

Data fluidity in DARIAH -- pushing the agenda forward

This paper provides both an update concerning the setting up of the European DARIAH infrastructure and a series of strong action lines related to the development of a data centred strategy for the humanities in the coming years. In particular we tackle various aspect of data management: data hosting, the setting up of a DARIAH seal of approval, the establishment of a charter between cultural heritage institutions and scholars and finally a specific view on certification mechanisms for data