Efficient privacy-preserving group-nearest-neighbor queries with the presence of active adversaries

Abstract

Location-based services (LBSs) allow users to ask location-dependent queries and receive information based on their location. A group of users can send a group-nearest-neighbor (GNN) query in order to receive a Point Of Interest (POI). This POI in turn shows a point which is the minimum distance from all members of the group. To benefit from these services, it is important to preserve the location privacy of each group user from others in the group (Intragroup location privacy) as well as from anyone outside of the group, including the LBS, (Intergroup location privacy). It may also be necessary to protect the location privacy of the resulting POI from the LBS and other possible attackers. In this paper, we propose two different privacy-preserving protocols for finding the exact answer to a GNN query among a set of returned POIs. The first protocol assumes a semi-honest model while the second one works in a malicious model. The proposed protocols are based on the Anonymous Veto network and Burmester–Desmedt key establishment protocols. The security analysis shows that the proposed protocols provide both Intragroup and Intergroup location privacy; they also protect the location privacy of the resulting POI and are resistant to collusion and multi-point aggregate distance attacks. The performed analyses indicate that they incur a constant computation cost per user and are efficient in terms of computation and communication costs.