A Novel Secret Location Sharing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Network

The wireless sensor network is a collection of sensor nodes that operate collectively to gather sensitive data from a target area. In the process of data collection the location of sensor nodes from where data is originated matters for taking any decision at the base station. Location i.e. the coordinates of a sensor node need to be shared among other nodes in many circumstances such as in key distribution phase, during routing of packets and many more. Secrecy of the location of every sensor node is important in any such cases. Therefore, there must be a location sharing scheme that facilitates the sharing of location among sensor nodes securely. In this paper, we have proposed a novel secure and robust mechanism for location sharing scheme using 2-threshold secret sharing scheme. The implementation process of the proposed model is shown here along with results and analysis.

Research on the move: exploring WhatsApp as a tool for understanding the intersections between migration, mobility, health and gender in South Africa

Background Reflecting global norms, South Africa is associated with high levels of cross-border and internal population mobility, yet migration-aware health system responses are lacking. Existing literature highlights three methodological challenges limiting the development of evidence-informed responses to migration and health: (1) lack of engagement with the process of migration; (2) exclusion of internal migrants; and (3) lack of methodologies that are able to capture ‘real-time’ data about health needs and healthcare seeking experiences over both time and place. In this paper, we reflect on a four-month pilot project which explored the use of WhatsApp Messenger - a popular mobile phone application used widely in sub-Saharan Africa – and assessed its feasibility as a research tool with migrant and mobile populations in order to inform a larger study that would address these challenges. Method A four-month pilot was undertaken with eleven participants between October 2019 and January 2020. Using Survey Node, an online platform that allows for the automatic administration of surveys through WhatsApp, monthly surveys were administered. The GPS coordinates of participants were also obtained. Recruited through civil society partners in Gauteng, participants were over the age of 18, comfortable engaging in English, and owned WhatsApp compatible cell phones. Enrolment involved an administered survey and training participants in the study protocol. Participants received reimbursement for their travel costs and monthly cell phone data. Results Out of a possible eighty eight survey and location responses, sixty one were received. In general, participants responded consistently to the monthly surveys and shared their location when prompted. Survey Node proved an efficient and effective way to administer surveys through WhatsApp. Location sharing via WhatsApp proved cumbersome and led to the development of a secure platform through which participants could share their location. Ethical concerns about data sharing over WhatsApp were addressed. Conclusions The success of the pilot indicates that WhatsApp can be used as a tool for data collection with migrant and mobile populations, and has informed the finalisation of the main study. Key lessons learnt included the importance of research design and processes for participant enrolment, and ensuring that the ethical concerns associated with WhatsApp are addressed.

Blockchain-Enabled Privacy-Preserving Location Sharing Scheme for LBSNs

The rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technology promotes the rapid development of location services industry. The idea of smart connectivity also provides a new direction for Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs). However, due to limited calculate ability and internal storage space of IoT devices, historical location data of users is generally stored in the central server, which is likely to cause the disclosure of users’ private data. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain-enabled Privacy-Preserving Location Sharing (B-PPLS) scheme, which is a new framework that not only protects user location privacy but also provides effective location sharing services for users. For B-PPLS, location data owners can share the location area instead of location coordinates to Requesters, in order to realize the location privacy preserving. Also, the Merkle hash tree is utilized to divide the location area, so as to realize the multilevel privacy preserving. Furthermore, four algorithms are proposed to achieve the four stages of initialization, location record, location sharing, and location verification, respectively. Finally, we analyze the security of the proposed B-PPLS scheme and compare the performance with other related location privacy-preserving schemes by experimental evaluation.

ILSSPP: Intelligent location sharing system with privacy preserving features for smart cities

Social networking services are increasingly accessed through mobile devices. This trend has prompted services such as Facebook and Google+to incorporate location as a de facto feature of user interaction. At the same time, services based on location such as Foursquare and Shopkick are also growing as smartphone market penetration increases. In fact, this growth is happening despite concerns (growing at a similar pace) about security and third-party use of private location information (e.g., for advertising). Nevertheless, service providers have been unwilling to build truly private systems in which they do not have access to location information. In this paper, we describe an architecture and a trial implementation of a privacy-preserving location sharing system called ILSSPP. The system protects location information from the service provider and yet enables fine grained location-sharing. One main feature of the system is to protect an individual’s social network structure. The pattern of location sharing preferences towards contacts can reveal this structure without any knowledge of the locations themselves. ILSSPP protects locations sharing preferences through protocol unification and masking. ILSSPP has been implemented as a standalone solution, but the technology can also be integrated into location-based services to enhance privacy.

Signature Identification and User Activity Analysis on Whatsapp Web through Network Data

WhatsApp messenger is a popular instant messaging application that employs end-to-end encryption for communication. WhatsApp Web is the browser-based implementation of WhatsApp messenger. Users of WhatsApp communicate securely using SSL protocol. Encryption and use of common port for communication by multiple applications poses challenge in traffic classification for application identification. It is highly needed to analyze the network traffic for the purpose of QoS, Intrusion Detection and application specific traffic classification. In this paper, we have done traffic analysis on the network packets captured through data transfer in whatsapp web. In the result, we have explored the user activities such as message texting, contact sharing, voice message, location sharing, media transfer and status viewing. Packet level traffic analysis of user activities reveal patterns in the encrypted SSL communication. This pattern is identified across SSL packet lengths for WhatsApp media transfer and voice message communication. Other important features WhatsApp is the ability to view the status of the message being sent. We have identified the read and unread message status in these data packets by exposing signatures in the network layer. These signatures are identified with the help of the SSL lengths in the TLS header information of WhatsApp Web network traffic traces. Various other information on WhatsApp traffic presented in our study is relevant to the version of WhatsApp Web v0.3.2386.

Emergency Contact and Location Sharing System for Women Safety

The crime rates against women are increasing day by day. This is a major issue in India as well as other countries. Women in India have been given equal rights as men but Safety has been not provided. As an engineer we can develop such a device which is useful for women safety. Our device helps women for her safety. This device can fit in purse with accurate and reliable real time tracking system. She can use mobile application for select any mobile number. One switch is given to send her location via message to emergency number. If switch pressed Arduino Mega read the switch and collect information from GPS system and send this information via Bluetooth to the selected Mobile number. This project focuses on the proposed model that can be used to deal with the problem of security issue of women harassment using GPS and Bluetooth based tracking application.

Location-sharing protocol for privacy protection in mobile online social networks

Location-based services are becoming more and more popular in mobile online social networks (mOSNs) for smart cities, but users’ privacy also has aroused widespread concern, such as locations, friend sets and other private information. At present, many protocols have been proposed, but these protocols are inefficient and ignore some security risks. In the paper, we present a new location-sharing protocol, which solves two issues by using symmetric/asymmetric encryption properly. We adopt the following methods to reduce the communication and computation costs: only setting up one location server; connecting social network server and location server directly instead of through cellular towers; avoiding broadcast encryption. We introduce dummy identities to protect users’ identity privacy, and prevent location server from inferring users’ activity tracks by updating dummy identities in time. The details of security and performance analysis with related protocols show that our protocol enjoys two advantages: (1) it’s more efficient than related protocols, which greatly reduces the computation and communication costs; (2) it satisfies all security goals; however, most previous protocols only meet some security goals.