A remote control scheme for ubiquitous personal computing

Ubiquitous computing refers to embedding computers and communication in our environment. Ubiquitous computing provides an attractive vision for the future of computing. The idea behind the ubiquitous computing is to make the computing power disappear in the environment, but will always be there whenever needed or in other words it means availability and invisibility.These invisible computers will not have keyboards or screens, but will watch us, listen to us and interact with us. Ubiquitous computing environments involve the interaction, coordination, and cooperation of numerous, casually accessible, and often invisible computing devices. One is happy when ones desires are fulfilled.The highest ideal of ubicomp is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. Ubiquitous computing is referred as pervasive computing throughout the paper. One of the goals of ubiquitous computing is to enable devices to sense changes in their environment and to automatically adapt and act based on these changes based on user needs and preferences The prime goal of this technology is to make human life more simple, safe and efficient by using the ambient intelligence of computers. Ubiquitous computing therefore induces a paradigm shift in the way we use computers: Instead of bringing the world into the computer (the Virtual Realityparadigm), computational power is now brought to the objects of the physica world. Eventually, the vision of Ubiquitous Computing induces a new way of thinking about computers in the world, one that takes into account the natural human environment and allows the computers themselves to vanish into the background. This paper presents a number of compelling applications using ubiquitous computing and addresses the associated security and usability concerns.

Future Generation Computer Systems, 2008

The purpose of ubiquitous computing is anywhere and anytime access to information within computing infrastructures that is blended into a background and no longer be reminded. This ubiquitous computing poses new security challenges while the information can be accessed at anywhere and anytime because it may be applied by criminal users. Additionally, the information may contain private information that cannot be shared by all user communities. Several approaches are developed to protect information for pervasive environments against malicious users. However, ad hoc mechanisms or protocols are typically added in the approaches by compromising disorganized policies or additional components to protect from unauthorized access.

Communications of the ACM, 1979

A method for implementing secure personal computing in a network with one or more central facilities is proposed. The method employs a public-key encryption device and hardware keys. Each user is responsible for his own security and need not rely on the security of the central facility or the communication links. A user can safely store confidential files in the central facility or transmit confidential data to other users on the network.

2002

Many predict that the computing environment of the future will be characterized by the presence of numerous invisible sensors and computing elements, autonomously interacting with each other to dynamically construct and provide services to users that enter and leave the environment. The software challenges to turn such pervasive or ubiquitous computing environments into reality are enormous, to say nothing of the hardware and social challenges. These challenges question many of the assumptions we are used to making and many of the solutions we are used to applying in our current software systems. In this talk, I will review some of the work of my group in the areas of software components, security and access control, and device independent Web access and then analyze where our solutions are lacking and must be adapted fo r pervasive computing.

Springer eBooks, 1993

Anyone who objects to this can either avoid the label wearers or ask the researchers concerned to make sure that they are not recorded.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

Current ubiquitous computing environments provide many kinds of information. This information may be accessed by different users under varying conditions depending on various contexts (e.g. location). These ubiquitous computing environments also impose new requirements on security. The ability for users to access their information in a secure and transparent manner, while adapting to changing contexts of the spaces they operate in is highly desirable in these environments. This paper presents a domain-based approach to access control in distributed environments with mobile, distributed objects and nodes. We utilize a slightly different notion of an object's "view", by linking its context to the state information available to it for access control purposes. In this work, we tackle the problem of hiding sensitive information in insecure environments by providing objects in the system a view of their state information, and subsequently manage this view. Combining access control requirements and multilevel security with mobile and contextual requirements of active objects allow us to re-evaluate security considerations for mobile objects. We present a middleware-based architecture for providing access control in such an environment and view-sensitive mechanisms for protection of resources while both objects and hosts are mobile. We also examine some issues with delegation of rights in these environments. Performance issues are discussed in supporting these solutions, as well as an initial prototype implementation and accompanying results.

Privacy is the most often-cited criticism of ubiquitous computing, and may be the greatest barrier to its long-term success. However, developers currently have little support in designing software architectures and in creating interactions that are effective in helping end-users manage their privacy. To address this problem, we present Confab, a toolkit for facilitating the development of privacy-sensitive ubiquitous computing applications. The requirements for Confab were gathered through an analysis of privacy needs for both end-users and application developers. Confab provides basic support for building ubiquitous computing applications, providing a framework as well as several customizable privacy mechanisms. Confab also comes with extensions for managing location privacy. Combined, these features allow application developers and end-users to support a spectrum of trust levels and privacy needs.

2003

ABSTRACT The goal of everyday privacy is to make it easy for endusers to share information with the right people at the right level of detail in ubiquitous computing environments. In this paper, we describe a conceptual model we have developed for everyday privacy, consisting of control over and feedback about disclosure.

2007

The main message of this position paper is that ubiquitous computing technology need not necessarily be an obstacle to privacy protection: if legal and social issues are given proper consideration, technology can also be used to allow individuals to exercise their rights. We believe that the key issue is to devise techniques able to support ambitious privacy protection policies while allowing for the flexibility required in the ambient intelligence context. We illustrate our position using three technical requirements: (1) formal specification of privacy policies, (2) trust management and (3) auditability, which show both the challenges posed by ubiquitous computing and the opportunities to strengthen privacy. For each of these requirements, we present the legal and social motivations, suggest technical challenges and provide hints on possible solutions based on our on-going work.

2003

Abstract. Ubiquitous computing stands to redefine established notions of pr ivacy as it introduces regular, pervasive sensing of personal information such as identity, location, and activity. To effectively and comfortably manage the di sclosure of personal information, end-users will require a coherent conceptual model of privacy and convenient user interfaces to manage it.