Providing secure and accountable privacy to roaming 802.11 mobile devices

Abstract

Nowadays, roaming individuals require ubiquitous, effortless, secure and private "on-the-go" connectivity for their Mobile Device (MD). At the same time, WiFi Access Networks (ANs) need to offer connectivity to MDs in an accountable and credible manner to avoid compromising their security policies. Our approach efficiently satisfies these conflicting requirements, and presents a solution where the MD does not have to disclose its identity when requesting network access. At the same time, the AN has a uniquely identifying alias for the MD, to account and profile for the connectivity it provides to it. The evaluation of our implementation on a live experimental testbed, demonstrates that our solution's overhead is remarkably low for the benefits it provides, and highlights its applicability and efficiency for real world deployment in the current Internet infrastructure.