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Patient privacy protection using anonymous access control techniques
Objective: The objective of this study is to develop a solution to preserve security and privacy in a healthcare environment where health-sensitive information will be accessed by many parties and stored in various distributed databases. The solution should maintain anonymous medical records and it should be able to link anonymous medical information in distributed databases into a single patient medical record with the patient identity. Methods: In this paper we present a protocol that can be used to authenticate and authorize patients to healthcare services without providing the patient identification. Healthcare service can identify the patient using separate temporary identities in each identification session and medical records are linked to these temporary identities. Temporary identities can be used to enable record linkage and reverse track real patient identity in critical medical situations. Results: The proposed protocol provides main security and privacy services such as user anonymity, message privacy, message confidentiality, user authentication, user authorization and message replay attacks. The medical environment validates the patient at the healthcare service as a real and registered patient for the medical services. Using the proposed protocol, the patient anonymous medical records at different healthcare services can be linked into one single report and it is possible to securely reverse track anonymous patient into the real identity. Conclusion: The protocol protects the patient privacy with a secure anonymous authentication to healthcare services and medical record registries according to the European and the UK legislations, where the patient real identity is not disclosed with the distributed patient medical records
Anonymous Single-Sign-On for n designated services with traceability
Anonymous Single-Sign-On authentication schemes have been proposed to allow
users to access a service protected by a verifier without revealing their
identity which has become more important due to the introduction of strong
privacy regulations. In this paper we describe a new approach whereby anonymous
authentication to different verifiers is achieved via authorisation tags and
pseudonyms. The particular innovation of our scheme is authentication can only
occur between a user and its designated verifier for a service, and the
verification cannot be performed by any other verifier. The benefit of this
authentication approach is that it prevents information leakage of a user's
service access information, even if the verifiers for these services collude
which each other. Our scheme also supports a trusted third party who is
authorised to de-anonymise the user and reveal her whole services access
information if required. Furthermore, our scheme is lightweight because it does
not rely on attribute or policy-based signature schemes to enable access to
multiple services. The scheme's security model is given together with a
security proof, an implementation and a performance evaluation.Comment: 3
InShopnito: an advanced yet privacy-friendly mobile shopping application
Mobile Shopping Applications (MSAs) are rapidly gaining popularity. They enhance the shopping experience, by offering customized recommendations or incorporating customer loyalty programs. Although MSAs are quite effective at attracting new customers and binding existing ones to a retailer's services, existing MSAs have several shortcomings. The data collection practices involved in MSAs and the lack of transparency thereof are important concerns for many customers. This paper presents inShopnito, a privacy-preserving mobile shopping application. All transactions made in inShopnito are unlinkable and anonymous. However, the system still offers the expected features from a modern MSA. Customers can take part in loyalty programs and earn or spend loyalty points and electronic vouchers. Furthermore, the MSA can suggest personalized recommendations even though the retailer cannot construct rich customer profiles. These profiles are managed on the smartphone and can be partially disclosed in order to get better, customized recommendations. Finally, we present an implementation called inShopnito, of which the security and performance is analyzed. In doing so, we show that it is possible to have a privacy-preserving MSA without having to sacrifice practicality
Quire: Lightweight Provenance for Smart Phone Operating Systems
Smartphone apps often run with full privileges to access the network and
sensitive local resources, making it difficult for remote systems to have any
trust in the provenance of network connections they receive. Even within the
phone, different apps with different privileges can communicate with one
another, allowing one app to trick another into improperly exercising its
privileges (a Confused Deputy attack). In Quire, we engineered two new security
mechanisms into Android to address these issues. First, we track the call chain
of IPCs, allowing an app the choice of operating with the diminished privileges
of its callers or to act explicitly on its own behalf. Second, a lightweight
signature scheme allows any app to create a signed statement that can be
verified anywhere inside the phone. Both of these mechanisms are reflected in
network RPCs, allowing remote systems visibility into the state of the phone
when an RPC is made. We demonstrate the usefulness of Quire with two example
applications. We built an advertising service, running distinctly from the app
which wants to display ads, which can validate clicks passed to it from its
host. We also built a payment service, allowing an app to issue a request which
the payment service validates with the user. An app cannot not forge a payment
request by directly connecting to the remote server, nor can the local payment
service tamper with the request
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
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