Secure Device Pairing Based on a Visual Channel: Design and Usability Study

— “Pairing” is the establishment of authenticated key agreement between two devices over a wireless channel. Such devices are ad hoc in nature as they lack any common preshared secrets or trusted authority. Fortunately, these devices can be connected via auxiliary physical (audio, visual, tactile) channels which can be authenticated by human users. They can therefore be used to form the basis of a pairing operation. Recently proposed pairing protocols and methods are based upon bidirectional physical channels. However, various pairing scenarios are asymmetric in nature, i.e., only a unidirectional physical channel exists between two devices (such as between a cell phone and an access point). In this paper, we show how strong mutual authentication can be achieved even with a unidirectional visual channel, where prior methods could provide only a weaker property termed as presence. This could help reduce the execution time and improve usability of prior pairing methods. In addition...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: TIFS
• Authors: Nitesh Saxena, Jan-Erik Ekberg, Kari Kostiainen, N. Asokan
• Keywords: Education, Pairing, Physical Channel, TIFS 2011, Visual Channel