23/06/2016 - 23/06/2016
Speaker: Yan Michalevsky (Stanford)
MASHaBLE: Mobile Applications of Secret Handshakes over Bluetooth LE
Abstract:
We present new applications for cryptographic secret hand- shakes between mobile devices on top of Bluetooth Low- Energy (LE).
Secret handshakes enable mutual authentication, with the property that the parties learn nothing about each other unless they have been both issued credentials by a group administrator.
This property provides strong privacy guarantees that enable interesting applications. One of them is proximity-based messaging for private communities.
We introduce MASHaBLE, a mobile application that enables participants to send messages to nearby users if and only if they belong to the same secret community.
We use direct peer-to-peer communication over Bluetooth LE, rather than relying on a central server.
We discuss the specifics of implementing secret handshakes over Bluetooth LE and present our prototype implementation.