Vigil / Secure Centaurus

January 1, 2000 - May 1, 2004

Vigil / Secure Centaurus is an ongoing research project on smart home / smart office scenario.

The goal of the project is to demonstrate a smart office environment where mobile user can use her handheld device to ad-hocly operate over all resources/services embedded in the environment. These services include doors, lights, music, powerpoint presentations, printers and various information services. A user can access these services through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and IR enabled handheld devices as well as using a voice command.

Additionally, the goal of the project is to use distributed trust management to provide a solution to security and trust problems in mobile pervasive environments. The current mobile ad-hoc environments provide a limited amount of security in terms of encryption and authentication, usually as part of the particular wireless technology. These solutions do not address the important issue of trust, which is required to enable secure interaction among various devices in ad-hoc environments. We have designed Vigil, which uses existing security methods along with distributed trust, to enable authentication and access control in pervasive environments. Vigil complements SPKI and Role Based Access Control with trust management. Every space, whether it is a room, a part of a room, building etc. is managed by an environment controller. The controller enforces a security policy which consists of rules for authenticating users and assigning domain-specific roles. Every resource in the space registers with the controller and trusts the controller to manage its access control. When a user enters the space, she/he registers with the controller using her/his certificates. These certificates are validated by the controller using certain rules. Based on her/his credentials, the user is assigned a set of roles and is given access rights associated with those roles. These are basic role based access rights. Access rights of users are dynamic and can be changed by delegations and revocations without affecting the roles of the user.

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