Replacing PKI with Identity Based Encryption
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Abstract
Pre-requisite: the course on Computer Security. Ideally, you will also make a link to some other course that you have studied as part of the taught part of the degree.In addition you should have good programming skills, and preferably some experience of web-based applications.
Public Key Infrastructures are used in many scenarios to establish trusted communication channels between parties. However, they face many practical challenges, as users find it difficult to use encryption and connect real people to an RSA key. An alternative is Identity Based Encryption, which enables the use of much shorter, text based encryption keys. More details are available here: http://crypto.stanford.edu/ibe/ . It has many desirable properties, including the ability to send messages to people who have not yet set up a public key, or messages that can only be read in the future.
The project would involve taking a scenario where PKI has been adopted - on the EU webinos project - and modifying it to support Identity Based Encryption instead. Having done so, the student will then investigate the differences in security properties, and what new functionality could be implemented. Depending on the progress made, an web-based application could be written to demonstrate the new functionality. The main research outputs would be showing an equivalence between the two system in terms of security goals (e.g. confidentiality, integrity and authentication are maintained) as well as demonstrating the practicality of IBE in this scenario. The student would have the opportunity to take this project in a direction they were most interested in, from proofs of protocols to field trials.
webinos is a large European project featuring organisations such as Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Deutsche Telekom and the W3C. It aims to create a cross-platform mobile application platform based on web standards. More details on webinos are available at http://webinos.org/