Groupthink: usability of secure group association for wireless devices

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 usabi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: HUC
• Authors: Rishab Nithyanand, Nitesh Saxena, Gene Tsudik, Ersin Uzun
• Keywords: HUC 2010, Human Computer Interaction, Initial Secure Association, Secure Group Association, Usability