Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Anchor of trust: towards collusion-resistant trusted indoor location for enterprise and industrial use

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Reliable location estimation has been a key enabler of many applications in the UbiComp space. Much progress has been made on the development of accurate of indoor location systems, which form the foundation of many interesting applications, particularly in consumer scenarios. However, many location-based applications in enterprise settings also require addressing another facet of reliability: assurance. Without having strong guarantees of a location estimate’s legitimacy, stakeholders must explicitly balance the advantages offered with the risks of falsification. In this space, there are two key threats: replay attacks, where signal and sensor information is collected in one location and replayed in another to falsify a location estimation later in time; and wormhole attacks, where signal and sensor information is forwarded to a remote location by a colluding device to falsify location estimation in real-time. In this work, we improve upon the state of the art in wormhole-resistant location estimation techniques. Specifically, we present the Location Anchor, which leverages a combination of technical solutions and social contracts to provide high-assurance proofs of device location that are resistant to wormhole attacks. Unlike existing work, the Location Anchor has minimal hardware costs, supports a rich tapestry of applications, and is compatible with commodity smartphone and tablet platforms. We show that the Location Anchor can extend existing replay-resistant location systems into wormhole-resistant location systems, even in the face of very aggressive attacker assumptions. We describe the protocols underlying the Location Anchor, as well as report on the efficacy of a prototype implementation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. https://source.android.com/security/keystore/features

References

  1. Are estimote beacons secure? How does secure UUID work? https://community.estimote.com/hc/en-us/articles/201371053. Accessed 24 Oct 2017

  2. Arthur W, Challener D (2015) A practical guide to TPM 2.0: using the trusted platform module in the new age of security. Apress, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Bahl P, Padmanabhan VN (2000) RADAR: an in-building RF-based user location and tracking system. Nineteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOMM ‘00). Proceedings IEEE 2(2000):775–784

    Google Scholar 

  4. Biehl JT, Cooper M, Filby G, Kratz S (2014) LoCo: a ready-to-deploy framework for efficient room localization using Wi-Fi, Proceedings of the 2014 ACM international joint conference on pervasive and ubiquitous computing. Seattle, Washington. https://doi.org/10.1145/2632048.2636083

  5. Biehl JT, Lee AJ, Filby G, Cooper M (2015) You’re where? prove it!: towards trusted indoor location estimation of mobile devices. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '15). ACM, New York, pp 909–919. https://doi.org/10.1145/2750858.2804284

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Bolliger P (2008) Redpin - adaptive, zero-configuration indoor localization through user collaboration, Proceedings of the first ACM international workshop on Mobile entity localization and tracking in GPS-less environments, San Francisco, California, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/1410012.1410025

  7. Carbunar B, Sion R, Potharaju R, Ehsa M (2012) The shy mayor: private badges in GeoSocial networks. Applied Cryptography and Network Security. Lecture notes in computer science, 7341. Springer, Berlin. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31284-7_26

    Book  Google Scholar 

  8. Fan M, Liu Q, Tang H, Chiu P (2014) HiFi: hide and find digital content associated with physical objects via coded light. Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, 1-6, Santa Barbara, California. https://doi.org/10.1145/2565585.2565587

  9. El-Khoribi RA, Hamza HS, Hammad MA (2013) Indoor localization and tracking using posterior state distribution of hidden Markov model. Proceedings of the 8th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China (CHINACOM ‘13). IEEE, Guilin. https://doi.org/10.1109/ChinaCom.2013.6694657

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Harter A, Hopper A, Steggles P, Ward A, Webster P (2002) The anatomy of a context-aware application. Wirel Netw 8(2/3 (March–May 2002)):187–197. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013767926256

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Hightower J, Want R, Borriello G (2000) SpotON: an indoor 3D location sensing technology based on RF signal strength, Tech. Rep. UW CSE 00–02-02. University of Washington, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Seattle

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hu Y-C, Perrig A, Johnson DB (2003) Packet leashes: a defense against wormhole attacks in wireless networks. In Proceedings of the Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM ‘03). IEEE, San Francisco. https://doi.org/10.1109/INFCOM.2003.1209219

    Book  Google Scholar 

  13. iBeacon for Developers. https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/. Accessed 24 Oct 2017

  14. Inatomi Y, Hong J, Ohtsuki T (2013) Hidden Markov model based localization using array antenna. Int J Wireless Inf Networks 20:246–255. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-013-0211-y

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kontakt.io Beacon Security. https://kontakt.io/products-and-solutions/complete-beacon-security/. Accessed 24 Oct 2017

  16. Luo W, Hengartner U (2010) Proving your location without giving up your privacy. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems & Applications (HotMobile '10). ACM, New York, pp 7–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/1734583.1734586

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Manweiler J, Scudellari R, Cox LP (2009) SMILE: encounter-based trust for mobile social services. In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM conference on Computer and communications security (CCS '09). ACM, New York, pp 246–255. https://doi.org/10.1145/1653662.1653692

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Moors T, Mei M, Salim A (2008) Using short-range communication to control mobile device functionality. Pers Ubiquit Comput 12(1 (January 2008)):11–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0124-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Polakis I, Volanis S, Athanasopoulos E, Markatos EP (2013) The man who was there: validating check-ins in location-based services. In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC '13). ACM, New York, pp 19–28. https://doi.org/10.1145/2523649.2523653

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Portnoi M, Shen C-C (2015) Loc-auth: location-enabled authentication through attribute-based encryption. In: International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC 2015). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCNC.2015.7069321

  21. Saroiu S, Wolman A (2009) Enabling new mobile applications with location proofs, Proceedings of the 10th workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, 1-6. Santa Cruz, California. https://doi.org/10.1145/1514411.1514414

  22. Yang D, Zhang D, Qu B, Cudré-Mauroux P (2016) PrivCheck: privacy-preserving check-in data publishing for personalized location based services. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '16). ACM, New York, pp 545–556. https://doi.org/10.1145/2971648.2971685

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Whisper Mode. Application Note. https://assets.lairdtech.com/home/brandworld/files/Application%20Note%20-%20BL600%20Whisper%20Mode.pdf. Accessed 24 Oct 2017

  24. Woo J, Kim Y-j, Lee J-o, Lim M-t (2006) Localization of mobile robot using particle filter. In: Proceedings of the SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference. IEEE, Busan. https://doi.org/10.1109/SICE.2006.315151

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Jacob T. Biehl & Gerry Filby

  2. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Adam J. Lee

Authors
  1. Jacob T. Biehl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Adam J. Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gerry Filby
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacob T. Biehl.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Biehl, J.T., Lee, A.J. & Filby, G. Anchor of trust: towards collusion-resistant trusted indoor location for enterprise and industrial use. Pers Ubiquit Comput 24, 551–569 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-019-01220-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-019-01220-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation