ProxiMate: proximity-based secure pairing using ambient wireless signals

Forming secure associations between wireless devices that do not share a prior trust relationship is an important problem. This paper presents ProxiMate, a system that allows wireless devices in proximity to securely pair with one another autonomously by generating a common cryptographic key directly from their shared time-varying wireless environment. The shared key synthesized by ProxiMate can be used by the devices to authenticate each others’ physical proximity and then to communicate confidentially. Unlike traditional pairing approaches such as Diffie-Hellman, ProxiMate is secure against a computationally unbounded adversary and its computational complexity is linear in the size of the key. We evaluate ProxiMate using an experimental prototype built using an open-source software-defined platform and demonstrate its effectiveness in generating common secret bits. We further show that it is possible to speed up secret key synthesis by monitoring multiple RF sources simultaneou...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: MOBISYS
• Authors: Suhas Mathur, Robert C. Miller, Alexander Varshavsky, Wade Trappe, Narayan B. Mandayam
• Keywords: Computer Networks, MOBISYS 2011, Physical Proximity, Rf Source, Rf Sources