Biblio

As more devices become connected to the internet and new technologies emerge to connect them, security must keep up to protect data during transmission and at rest. Several instances of security breaches have forced many companies to investigate the effectiveness of their security measures. In this paper, we discuss different methodologies for protecting data as it relates to wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Data collected from these sensors range in type from location data of an individual to surveillance for military applications. We propose a solution that protects the location of the base station and the nodes while transmitting data.

The online advertising ecosystem is built upon the massive data collection of ad networks to learn the properties of users for targeted ad deliveries. Existing efforts have investigated the privacy leakage behaviors of mobile ad networks. However, there lacks a large-scale measurement study to evaluate the scale of privacy leakage through mobile ads. In this work, we present a study of the potential privacy leakage in location-based mobile advertising services based on a large-scale measurement. We first introduce a threat model in the mobile ad ecosystem, and then design a measurement system to perform extensive threat measurements and assessments. To counteract the privacy leakage threats, we design and implement an adaptive location obfuscation mechanism, which can be used to obfuscate location data in real-time while minimizing the impact to mobile ad businesses.

The online advertising ecosystem is built upon the massive data collection of ad networks to learn the properties of users for targeted ad deliveries. Existing efforts have investigated the privacy leakage behaviors of mobile ad networks. However, there lacks a large-scale measurement study to evaluate the scale of privacy leakage through mobile ads. In this work, we present a study of the potential privacy leakage in location-based mobile advertising services based on a large-scale measurement. We first introduce a threat model in the mobile ad ecosystem, and then design a measurement system to perform extensive threat measurements and assessments. To counteract the privacy leakage threats, we design and implement an adaptive location obfuscation mechanism, which can be used to obfuscate location data in real-time while minimizing the impact to mobile ad businesses.

Wearable technology has been on an exponential rise and shows no signs of slowing down. One category of wearable technology is Fitness bands, which have the potential to show a user's activity levels and location data. Such information stored in fitness bands is just the beginning of a long trail of evidence fitness bands can store, which represents a huge opportunity to digital forensic practitioners. On the surface of recent work and research in this area, there does not appear to be any similar work that has already taken place on fitness bands and particularly, the devices in this study, a Garmin Forerunner 110, a Fitbit Charge HR and a Generic low-cost HETP fitness tracker. In this paper, we present our analysis of these devices for any possible digital evidence in a forensically sound manner, identifying files of interest and location data on the device. Data accuracy and validity of the evidence is shown, as a test run scenario wearing all of the devices allowed for data comparison analysis.

Participatory sensing tries to create cost-effective, large-scale sensing systems by leveraging sensors embedded in mobile devices. One major challenge in these systems is to protect the users' privacy, since users will not contribute data if their privacy is jeopardized. Especially location data needs to be protected if it is likely to reveal information about the users' identities. A common solution is the blinding out approach that creates so-called ban zones in which location data is not published. Thereby, a user's important places, e.g., her home or workplace, can be concealed. However, ban zones of a fixed size are not able to guarantee any particular level of privacy. For instance, a ban zone that is large enough to conceal a user's home in a large city might be too small in a less populated area. For this reason, we propose an approach for dynamic map-based blinding out: The boundaries of our privacy zones, called Silent Zones, are determined in such way that at least k buildings are located within this zone. Thus, our approach adapts to the habitat density and we can guarantee k-anonymity in terms of surrounding buildings. In this paper, we present two new algorithms for creating Silent Zones and evaluate their performance. Our results show that especially in worst case scenarios, i.e., in sparsely populated areas, our approach outperforms standard ban zones and guarantees the specified privacy level.