WORAL: A Witness Oriented Secure Location Provenance Framework for Mobile Devices

Abstract

Location-based services allow mobile device users to access various services based on the users’ current physical location information. Path-critical applications, such as supply chain verification, require a chronological ordering of location proofs. It is a significant challenge in distributed and user-centric architectures for users to prove their presence and the path of travel in a privacy-protected and secure manner. So far, proposed schemes for secure location proofs are mostly subject to tampering, not resistant to collusion attacks, do not offer preservation of the provenance, and are not flexible enough for users to prove their provenance of location proofs. In this paper, we present WORAL, a complete ready-to-deploy framework for generating and validating witness oriented asserted location provenance records. The WORAL framework is based on the asserted location proof protocol and the OTIT model for generating secure location provenance on the mobile devices. WORAL allows user-centric, collusion resistant, tamper-evident, privacy protected, verifiable, and provenance preserving location proofs for mobile devices. This paper presents the schematic development, feasibility of usage, comparative advantage over similar protocols, and implementation of WORAL for android device users including a Google Glass-based client for enhanced usability.