skip to main content
10.1145/2535771.2535798acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagescommConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article
Open access

Crypto-Book: an architecture for privacy preserving online identities

Published: 21 November 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Through cross-site authentication schemes such as OAuth and OpenID, users increasingly rely on popular social networking sites for their digital identities--but use of these identities brings privacy and tracking risks. We propose Crypto-Book, an extension to existing digital identity infrastructures that offers privacy-preserving, digital identities through the use of public key cryptography and ring signatures. Crypto-Book builds a privacy-preserving cryptographic layer atop existing social network identities, via third-party key servers that convert social network identities into public/private key-pairs on demand. Using linkable ring signatures, these key-pairs along with the public keys of other identities create unique pseudonyms untraceable back to the owner yet can resist anonymous abuse.
Our proof-of-concept implementation of Crypto-Book creates public/private key pairs for Facebook users, and includes a private key pickup protocol based on E-mail. We present Black Box, a case study application that uses Crypto-Book for accountable anonymous whistle-blowing. Black Box allows users to sign files deniably using ring signatures, using a list of arbitrary Facebook users -- who need not consent or even be aware of this use -- as an explicit anonymity set.

References

[1]
D. Boneh and M. Franklin. Identity-based encryption from the Weil pairing. In 21st CRYPTO. 2001.
[2]
D. Chaum. Blind signatures for untraceable payments. In CRYPTO, 1982.
[3]
D. Chaum and E. V. Heyst. Group signatures. In Eurocrypt, Apr. 1991.
[4]
H. Corrigan-Gibbs and B. Ford. Dissent: accountable anonymous group messaging. In 17th CCS, Oct. 2010.
[5]
L. A. Cutillo, R. Molva, and T. Strufe. Safebook: A privacy-preserving online social network leveraging on real-life trust. Communications Magazine, IEEE, 2009.
[6]
G. Danezis and A. Serjantov. Statistical disclosure or intersection attacks on anonymity systems. In Information Hiding Workshop, May 2004.
[7]
Y. Desmedt and J.-J. Quisquater. Public-key systems based on the difficulty of tampering (is there a difference between DES and RSA?). In CRYPTO, 1987.
[8]
A. Dey and S. Weis. PseudoID: Enhancing privacy in federated login. HotPETs, 2010.
[9]
R. Dingledine, N. Mathewson, and P. Syverson. Tor: the second-generation onion router. In 12th USENIX Security, Aug. 2004.
[10]
Federal Information Processing Standards Publication. Digital signature standard (DSS), July 2013. FIPS 186-4.
[11]
S. Guha, K. Tang, and P. Francis. Noyb: Privacy in online social networks. In WOSN, 2008.
[12]
E. Hammer-Lahav. The OAuth 1.0 protocol, Apr. 2010. RFC 5849.
[13]
D. H�hnlein, M. Jacobson, and D. Weber. Towards practical non-interactive public key cryptosystems using non-maximal imaginary quadratic orders. In Journal Designs, Codes and Cryptography, 2003.
[14]
S. Jahid, P. Mittal, and N. Borisov. EASiER: Encryption-based access control in social networks with efficient revocation. In ASIACCS, 2011.
[15]
D. Kedogan, D. Agrawal, and S. Penz. Limits of anonymity in open environments. In 5th International Workshop on Information Hiding, Oct. 2002.
[16]
Z. A. Khattak, J.-l. A. Manan, S. Sulaiman, et al. Analysis of open environment sign-in schemes-privacy enhanced & trustworthy approach. Journal of Advances in Information Technology, 2011.
[17]
G. Kontaxis, M. Polychronakis, and E. P. Markatos. SudoWeb: Minimizing information disclosure to third parties in single sign-on platforms. In ISC. 2011.
[18]
J. K. Liu, V. K. Wei, and D. S. Wong. Linkable spontaneous anonymous group signature for ad hoc groups. In Australian Conference on Information Security and Privacy, pages 614--623, July 2004.
[19]
M. M. Lucas and N. Borisov. flyByNight: mitigating the privacy risks of social networking. In SOUPS, 2009.
[20]
W. Luo, Q. Xie, and U. Hengartner. FaceCloak: An architecture for user privacy on social networking sites. In CSE.
[21]
G. Maganis, E. Shi, H. Chen, and D. Song. Opaak: using mobile phones to limit anonymous identities online. In MobiSys, 2012.
[22]
U. Maurer and Y. Yacobi. Non-interactive public-key cryptography. In EUROCRYPT, 1991.
[23]
A. Narayanan. SocialKeys: Transparent cryptography via key distribution over social networks. In IAB Workshop on Internet Privacy, 2010.
[24]
OpenID. http://openid.net/.
[25]
J.-F. Raymond. Traffic Analysis: Protocols, Attacks, Design Issues, and Open Problems. In Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability, July 2000.
[26]
R. Rivest, A. Shamir, and Y. Tauman. How to leak a secret. In ASIACRYPT, pages 552--565, Dec. 2001.
[27]
R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman. A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems. Communications of the ACM, 1978.
[28]
A. Shamir. Identity-based cryptosystems and signature schemes. In Advances in cryptology, 1985.
[29]
X. Song, D. I. Wolinsky, and B. Ford. Faceless: decentralized anonymous group messaging for online social networks. In SNS, April 2012.
[30]
H. Tanaka. A realization scheme for the identity-based cryptosystem. In CRYPTO, 1987.
[31]
S. Tsujii and T. Itoh. An ID-based cryptosystem based on the discrete logarithm problem. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 1989.
[32]
R. Watanabe and Y. Miyake. Account management method with blind signature scheme. Engineering and Technology, World of Science, 2011.
[33]
D. I. Wolinsky, H. Corrigan-Gibbs, B. Ford, and A. Johnson. Scalable anonymous group communication in the anytrust model. In EuroSec, Apr. 2012.
[34]
D. I. Wolinsky, H. Corrigan-Gibbs, A. Johnson, and B. Ford. Dissent in numbers: Making strong anonymity scale. In 10th OSDI, Oct. 2012.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Privacy in Online Social Networks: A Systematic Mapping Study and a Classification FrameworkDisease Control Through Social Network Surveillance10.1007/978-3-031-07869-9_6(109-131)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
  • (2020)Nym Credentials: Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Identity with Blockchains2020 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technology (CVCBT)10.1109/CVCBT50464.2020.00010(56-67)Online publication date: Jun-2020
  • (2019)Towards Privacy-Preserving Location Sharing over Mobile Online Social NetworksIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2018EDP7187E102.D:1(133-146)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2019
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Crypto-Book: an architecture for privacy preserving online identities

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Information & Contributors

        Information

        Published In

        cover image ACM Conferences
        HotNets-XII: Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks
        November 2013
        188 pages
        ISBN:9781450325967
        DOI:10.1145/2535771
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

        Sponsors

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 21 November 2013

        Check for updates

        Author Tags

        1. anonymity
        2. anonymous communication
        3. authentication
        4. online social networks

        Qualifiers

        • Research-article

        Funding Sources

        Conference

        HotNets-XII
        Sponsor:
        HotNets-XII: Twelfth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks
        November 21 - 22, 2013
        Maryland, College Park

        Acceptance Rates

        HotNets-XII Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 110 submissions, 24%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 110 of 460 submissions, 24%

        Contributors

        Other Metrics

        Bibliometrics & Citations

        Bibliometrics

        Article Metrics

        • Downloads (Last 12 months)48
        • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)9
        Reflects downloads up to 17 Oct 2024

        Other Metrics

        Citations

        Cited By

        View all
        • (2022)Privacy in Online Social Networks: A Systematic Mapping Study and a Classification FrameworkDisease Control Through Social Network Surveillance10.1007/978-3-031-07869-9_6(109-131)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
        • (2020)Nym Credentials: Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Identity with Blockchains2020 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technology (CVCBT)10.1109/CVCBT50464.2020.00010(56-67)Online publication date: Jun-2020
        • (2019)Towards Privacy-Preserving Location Sharing over Mobile Online Social NetworksIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2018EDP7187E102.D:1(133-146)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2019
        • (2018)Analysis of Newer Aadhaar Privacy ModelsInformation Systems Security10.1007/978-3-030-05171-6_20(386-404)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2018
        • (2017)Systematizing Decentralization and Privacy: Lessons from 15 Years of Research and DeploymentsProceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies10.1515/popets-2017-00562017:4(404-426)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2017
        • (2016)Comparison ananlyses for anonymous communication schemes in social network: A proposal of Onion based Ring Router model in Social Networking (RTor)2016 International Conference on Wireless Communications, Signal Processing and Networking (WiSPNET)10.1109/WiSPNET.2016.7566206(610-616)Online publication date: Mar-2016
        • (2015)UBackup-IIProceedings of the 2015 2nd International Conference on Information Science and Control Engineering10.1109/ICISCE.2015.122(522-527)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2015
        • (2015)SpyProceedings of the 15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing10.1109/CCGrid.2015.88(951-960)Online publication date: 4-May-2015
        • (2015)Non-conventional Digital Signatures and Their Implementations—A ReviewInternational Joint Conference10.1007/978-3-319-19713-5_36(425-435)Online publication date: 27-May-2015
        • (2014)The workshop on diversity in systems research 2013ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review10.1145/2626401.262642248:1(103-106)Online publication date: 15-May-2014

        View Options

        View options

        PDF

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader

        Get Access

        Login options

        Media

        Figures

        Other

        Tables

        Share

        Share

        Share this Publication link

        Share on social media