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Groupthink: usability of secure group association for wireless devices
Conference proceeding

Groupthink: usability of secure group association for wireless devices

Rishab Nithyanand, Nitesh Saxena, Gene Tsudik and Ersin Uzun
Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on ubiquitous computing, pp.331-340
Ubicomp '10
09/26/2010
DOI: 10.1145/1864349.1864399

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Abstract

A fairly common modern setting entails users, each in possession of a personal wireless device, wanting to communicate securely, via their devices. If these users (and their devices) have no prior association, a new security context must be established. In order to prevent potential attacks, the initial context (association) establishment process must involve only the intended devices and their users. A number of methods for initial secure association of two devices have been proposed; their usability factors have been explored and compared extensively. However, a more challenging problem of initial secure association of a group of devices (and users) has not received much attention. Although a few secure group association methods have been proposed, their usability aspects have not been studied, especially, in a comparative manner. This paper discusses desirable features and evaluation criteria for secure group association, identifies suitable methods and presents a comparative usability study. Results show that some simple methods (e.g., peer- or leader-based number comparisons) are quite attractive for small groups, being fast, reasonably secure and well-received by users.
 group association device pairing usability

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