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

The Anonymous Poster: How to Protect Internet Users’ Privacy and Prevent Abuse

The threat of anonymous Internet posting to individual privacy has been met with congressional and judicial indecisiveness. Part of the problem stems from the inherent conflict between punishing those who disrespect one\u27s privacy by placing a burden on the individual websites and continuing to support the Internet\u27s development. Additionally, assigning traditional tort liability is problematic as the defendant enjoys an expectation of privacy as well, creating difficulty in securing the necessary information to proceed with legal action. One solution to resolving invasion of privacy disputes involves a uniform identification verification program that ensures user confidentiality while promoting accountability for malicious behavior

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

Web Tracking: Mechanisms, Implications, and Defenses

This articles surveys the existing literature on the methods currently used by web services to track the user online as well as their purposes, implications, and possible user's defenses. A significant majority of reviewed articles and web resources are from years 2012-2014. Privacy seems to be the Achilles' heel of today's web. Web services make continuous efforts to obtain as much information as they can about the things we search, the sites we visit, the people with who we contact, and the products we buy. Tracking is usually performed for commercial purposes. We present 5 main groups of methods used for user tracking, which are based on sessions, client storage, client cache, fingerprinting, or yet other approaches. A special focus is placed on mechanisms that use web caches, operational caches, and fingerprinting, as they are usually very rich in terms of using various creative methodologies. We also show how the users can be identified on the web and associated with their real names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, or even street addresses. We show why tracking is being used and its possible implications for the users (price discrimination, assessing financial credibility, determining insurance coverage, government surveillance, and identity theft). For each of the tracking methods, we present possible defenses. Apart from describing the methods and tools used for keeping the personal data away from being tracked, we also present several tools that were used for research purposes - their main goal is to discover how and by which entity the users are being tracked on their desktop computers or smartphones, provide this information to the users, and visualize it in an accessible and easy to follow way. Finally, we present the currently proposed future approaches to track the user and show that they can potentially pose significant threats to the users' privacy.Comment: 29 pages, 212 reference

Energy efficient privacy preserved data gathering in wireless sensor networks having multiple sinks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) generally have a many-to-one structure so that event information flows from sensors to a unique sink. In recent WSN applications, many-tomany structures are evolved due to need for conveying collected event information to multiple sinks at the same time. This study proposes an anonymity method bases on k-anonymity for preventing record disclosure of collected event information in WSNs. Proposed method takes the anonymity requirements of multiple sinks into consideration by providing different levels of privacy for each destination sink. Attributes, which may identify of an event owner, are generalized or encrypted in order to meet the different anonymity requirements of sinks. Privacy guaranteed event information can be multicasted to all sinks instead of sending to each sink one by one. Since minimization of energy consumption is an important design criteria for WSNs, our method enables us to multicast the same event information to multiple sinks and reduce energy consumption

CYCLOSA: Decentralizing Private Web Search Through SGX-Based Browser Extensions

By regularly querying Web search engines, users (unconsciously) disclose large amounts of their personal data as part of their search queries, among which some might reveal sensitive information (e.g. health issues, sexual, political or religious preferences). Several solutions exist to allow users querying search engines while improving privacy protection. However, these solutions suffer from a number of limitations: some are subject to user re-identification attacks, while others lack scalability or are unable to provide accurate results. This paper presents CYCLOSA, a secure, scalable and accurate private Web search solution. CYCLOSA improves security by relying on trusted execution environments (TEEs) as provided by Intel SGX. Further, CYCLOSA proposes a novel adaptive privacy protection solution that reduces the risk of user re- identification. CYCLOSA sends fake queries to the search engine and dynamically adapts their count according to the sensitivity of the user query. In addition, CYCLOSA meets scalability as it is fully decentralized, spreading the load for distributing fake queries among other nodes. Finally, CYCLOSA achieves accuracy of Web search as it handles the real query and the fake queries separately, in contrast to other existing solutions that mix fake and real query results

Maintaining unlinkability in group based P2P environments

In the wake of the success of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking, security has arisen as one of its main concerns, becoming a key issue when evaluating a P2P system. Unfortunately, some systems' design focus targeted issues such as scalabil-ity or overall performance, but not security. As a result, security mechanisms must be provided at a later stage, after the system has already been designed and partially (or even fully) implemented, which may prove a cumbersome proposition. This work exposes how a security layer was provided under such circumstances for a specic Java based P2P framework: JXTA-Overlay.Arran de l'èxit de (P2P) peer-to-peer, la seguretat ha sorgit com una de les seves principals preocupacions, esdevenint una qüestió clau en l'avaluació d'un sistema P2P. Malauradament, alguns sistemes de disseny apunten focus de problemes com l'escalabilitat o l'acompliment general, però no de seguretat. Com a resultat d'això, els mecanismes de seguretat s¿han de proporcionar en una etapa posterior, després que el sistema ja ha estat dissenyat i parcialment (o fins i tot totalment) implementat, la qual cosa pot ser una proposició incòmode. Aquest article exposa com es va proveir una capa de seguretat sota aquestes circumstàncies per un Java específic basat en un marc P2P: JXTA-superposició.A raíz del éxito de (P2P) peer-to-peer, la seguridad ha surgido como una de sus principales preocupaciones, convirtiéndose en una cuestión clave en la evaluación de un sistema P2P. Desgraciadamente, algunos sistemas de diseño apuntan un foco de problemas como la escalabilidad o el desempeño general, pero no de seguridad. Como resultado de ello, los mecanismos de seguridad se proporcionarán en una etapa posterior, después de que el sistema ya ha sido diseñado y parcialmente (o incluso totalmente) implementado, lo que puede ser una proposición incómodo. Este artículo expone cómo se proveyó una capa de seguridad bajo estas circunstancias por un Java específico basado en un marco P2P: JXTA-superposición

Planning for the Future of Cyber Attack Attribution : Hearing Before the H. Subcomm. on Technology and Innovation of the H. Comm. on Science and Technology, 111th Cong., July 15, 2010 (Statement by Adjunct Professor Marc Rotenberg, Geo. U. L. Center)

Steve Bellovin, another security expert, noted recently that one of risks of the new White House plan for cyber security is that it places too much emphasis on attribution. As Dr. Bellovin explains: The fundamental premise of the proposed strategy is that our serious Internet security problems are due to lack of sufficient authentication. That is demonstrably false. The biggest problem was and is buggy code. All the authentication in the world won\u27t stop a bad guy who goes around the authentication system, either by finding bugs exploitable before authentication is performed, finding bugs in the authentication system itself, or by hijacking your system and abusing the authenticated connection set up by the legitimate user. While I believe the White House, the Cyber Security Advisor, and the various participants in the drafting process have made an important effort to address privacy and security interests, I share Professor Bellovin’s concern that too much emphasis has been placed on promoting identification. I also believe that online identification, promoted by government, will be used for purposes unrelated to cyber security and could ultimately chill political speech and limit the growth of the Internet. Greater public participation in the development of this policy as well as a formal rulemaking on the White House proposal could help address these concerns