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Abstract |
Wireless, mobile, and context-awareness applications are considered to be the epitome of pervasive computing, but they bring with them the inherent security challenges of mobile ad-hoc networking. Mobile ad-hoc networks are mainly formed by mobile users, which can belong to different trust domains, in order to leverage the wealth of pervasive resources and available capabilities. The use of digital certificates is suitable for pervasive networking because of its decentralized and dynamic nature. Nevertheless, the validation of such certificates can become a more complex and costly process than it is in fixed-infrastructure networks. This is because pervasive networks face challenges such as environments that change with a certain degree of randomness, ad-hoc interactions with foreign devices, temporal disconnections that make it difficult to access updated and required information, and limited devices running costly processes. For these reasons, we propose a user-centric architecture that extends the validation of digital certificates in an adaptive way. The main contribution consists of a decision engine that takes advantage of the specific local and external resources in an opportunistic fashion. The solution preserves the security level required for each application and the resource consumption of the user device. |
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