Secure and Private Service Discovery in Pervasive Computing Environments

In pervasive computing environments, service discovery is an essential step for computing devices to properly discover, configure, and communicate with each other. We introduce a user-centric service discovery model, called PrudentExposure, which automates authentication processes. Traditional authentication approaches requires much users’ involvement. PrudentExposure encodes hundreds of authentication messages in a novel code word form. Moreover, we discuss how a progressive and probabilistic model can protect both users’ and service providers’ privacy. Perhaps the most serious challenge for pervasive service discovery is the integration of computing devices with people. In a challenging case, both users and service providers want the other parties to expose sensitive information first. Our model protects both users and service providers.