ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals

Forming secure associations between wireless devices that do not share a prior trust relationship is an important problem. This paper presents ProxiMate, a system that allows wireless devices in proximity to securely pair with one an- other autonomously by generating a common cryptographic key direc...

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Main Author: Miller, Robert C.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2019
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121443
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author Miller, Robert C.
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Miller, Robert C.
author_sort Miller, Robert C.
collection MIT
description Forming secure associations between wireless devices that do not share a prior trust relationship is an important problem. This paper presents ProxiMate, a system that allows wireless devices in proximity to securely pair with one an- other autonomously by generating a common cryptographic key directly from their shared time-varying wireless environment. The shared key synthesized by ProxiMate can be used by the devices to authenticate each others’ physical proximity and then to communicate confidentially. Unlike traditional pairing approaches such as Diffie-Hellman, ProxiMate is secure against a computationally unbounded adversary and its computational complexity is linear in the size of the key. We evaluate ProxiMate using an experimental proto-type built using an open-source software-defined platform and demonstrate its effectiveness in generating common secret bits. We further show that it is possible to speed up secret key synthesis by monitoring multiple RF sources simultaneously or by shaking together the devices that need to be paired. Finally, we show that ProxiMate is resistant to even the most powerful attacker who controls the public RF source used by the legitimate devices for pairing.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1214432022-09-27T10:02:37Z ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals Miller, Robert C. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Forming secure associations between wireless devices that do not share a prior trust relationship is an important problem. This paper presents ProxiMate, a system that allows wireless devices in proximity to securely pair with one an- other autonomously by generating a common cryptographic key directly from their shared time-varying wireless environment. The shared key synthesized by ProxiMate can be used by the devices to authenticate each others’ physical proximity and then to communicate confidentially. Unlike traditional pairing approaches such as Diffie-Hellman, ProxiMate is secure against a computationally unbounded adversary and its computational complexity is linear in the size of the key. We evaluate ProxiMate using an experimental proto-type built using an open-source software-defined platform and demonstrate its effectiveness in generating common secret bits. We further show that it is possible to speed up secret key synthesis by monitoring multiple RF sources simultaneously or by shaking together the devices that need to be paired. Finally, we show that ProxiMate is resistant to even the most powerful attacker who controls the public RF source used by the legitimate devices for pairing. 2019-06-28T11:57:56Z 2019-06-28T11:57:56Z 2011-06 2019-06-27T15:50:37Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-4503-0643-0 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121443 Mathur, Suhas, rob Miller, Alexander Varshavsky, Wade Trappe and Narayan Mandayam. "ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals." Proceeding of the MobiSys '11, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, Bethesda, Maryland, USA, June 28-July 01, pages 211-224. en 10.1145/1999995.2000016 MobiSys '11 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) other univ website
spellingShingle Miller, Robert C.
ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
title ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
title_full ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
title_fullStr ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
title_full_unstemmed ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
title_short ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
title_sort proximate proximity based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121443
work_keys_str_mv AT millerrobertc proximateproximitybasedsecurepairingusingambientwirelesssignals