SECURE and TRUSTED MOBILE COMMERCE SYSTEM BASED on VIRTUAL CURRENCIES Ioannis Kounelis [email protected] Doctoral Thesis in Inform
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SECURE AND TRUSTED MOBILE COMMERCE SYSTEM BASED ON VIRTUAL CURRENCIES Ioannis Kounelis [email protected] Doctoral Thesis in Information and Communication Technology Stockholm, Sweden 2015 School of Information and Communication Technology Royal Institute of Technology Electrum 229, SE-16440 TRITA-ICT 2015:05 Kista, Sweden ISBN 978-91-7595-556-8 Akademisk avhandling som med tillstånd av Kungl Tekniska högskolan framlägges till offentlig granskning för avläggande av teknologie doktorsexamen i Informations- och Kommunikationsteknik fredagen den 5 juni 2015 klockan 10:00 i Sal C, Electrum, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Kista 164 40, Stockholm. © Ioannis Kounelis, 2015 Tryck: Universitetsservice US AB Abstract With the widespread usage of mobile devices and their applications, many areas of innovation have created a multitude of opportunities for mobile technologies to be deployed with very interesting effects. One such new area that emerged in the last few years is mobile commerce. It represents a system where various entities create real–life or digital assets, distribute information about them to interested consumers, execute transactions, accept various types of compensation methods, and finally deliver these assets; all of it in a secure and trusted manner, respecting users’ privacy. Since mobile devices are increasingly used for m-commerce, it is important to ensure that users’ data on such devices are kept secure. Mobile devices contain many of our personal and private data and information, since we nowadays use them for all kind of activities, both personal and professional. However, such data and information are not always treated in a secure and privacy friendly way. The goal of this thesis is to identify and provide solutions to security related problems found on mobile devices, such as communications, storage and mobile application design, and with the use of cryptocurrencies to combine the findings in the design of a secure mobile commerce system. As a result, this thesis describes a design and architecture of a secure e- commerce system, called eAgora, primarily exploiting mobile technology. The system is innovative as it treats digital goods, classified and called mobile commerce objects. Based on the attributes and anticipated use of such specific m–commerce objects, different security and privacy measures for each of them are needed and enforced. The goal was to design a system that deals with mobile commerce in a secure and privacy friendly way in all the lifecycle of the transactions. As users are mostly using mobile devices to connect to the proposed services, research first focused on mobile device security and privacy issues, such as insecure storage on the mobile device, insecure handling of user credentials and personal information, and insecure communications. Issues not only coming from the device itself but also from the nature of it; being mobile it is used in a different way that the classical desktop computers. Mobile devices are used in public, in an environment that cannot be controlled, and are interfacing a variety of networks that are not under the mobile device user’s control. Potential attackers’ interest was analysed in different mobile commerce scenarios in order to understand the needs for security enhancements. After having analyzed the possible threats, a methodology for mobile application development that would allow many common development errors to be avoided and security and privacy mechanisms to be considered by design was specified. Moreover, in order to provide secure storage and guard against active and passive intruder attacks, a secure Mobile Crypto Services Provider facility that allows storage of data on the UICC cards was designed and implemented. In order to secure communications, a secure e-mail application was designed and implemented. The application provides a user-friendly way to encrypt and sign e- mails, using the users’ already working e-mail accounts. The security functionality is completely transparent to users and ensures confidentiality and integrity of e-mail exchange. For the mobile commerce system, an architecture that enables exchange of m- commerce objects between different merchants, customers and retailers is proposed. In i the architecture, policy enforcement and the feature to detect suspicious events that may be illegal and to cooperate with law enforcement was embedded. The newly defined technology of virtual currencies is used as a payment facilitator within the proposed architecture. Many of its innovative features are adopted but some are also extended, such as the secure use of the user wallet files, i.e. the files that link the user with the virtual currencies and enable payment transactions between customers and merchants. Although there is no distinction between different virtual currencies, Bitcoin is used as an example of a market valued trading currency to validate and evaluate the proposed secure e-commerce architecture and the findings have been applied on it. The thesis provides detailed use cases that demonstrate how the proposed architecture of eAgora functions in different complicated e-trading circumstances and how different security related mechanisms are used. The thesis concludes with the analysis of the research results and with proposed directions for future research and development works. ii Ph.D. Funding For this Ph.D., a three year grant was given from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Grantholder cat. 20). As a result, research activities for the three year period have been carried out at the Institute of Protection and Security of the Citizen, Digital Citizen Security Unit, in Ispra, Italy. iii Acknowledgment There are many people to thank for their support and assistance during my Ph.D. studies. I have been a Ph.D. student for almost four and a half years and many people have played an important role in the research outcomes throughout this period. First of all, I would like to thank Prof. Sead Muftic, my Ph.D. supervisor. He was the one that took me on board as a Ph.D. student and assisted me all the way through. As during my Ph.D. studies I worked for three lovely years at the Joint Research Centre of European Commission in Ispra, Italy, I feel obliged to thank many people with whom I had a very fruitful collaboration and who have supported and assisted me throughout this period: Stefan Lechner and Jean-Pierre Nordvik, who accepted me at the JRC, provided unreserved support and showed genuine interest for my studies and needs. Jan Löschner, my JRC supervisor, who guided me during my studies, with whom I had many interesting brainstorming sessions and who always showed me the logical approach when dealing with problems. Gianmarco Baldini, who took me on board on iCore and supported my ideas of using it for m-commerce as well. Igor Nai-Fovino, for his expert advice and important suggestions. Dimitrios Geneiatakis for the fruitful change of thoughts, constructive collaboration and the very creative coffee breaks. There are many other people to acknowledge at the JRC. Many thanks to Marta Rossi, Rosanna Di Gioia, Martin van den Steen, Ricardo Neisse, David Shaw, Vincent Mahieu, Laurent Beslay, and Angela Gianesin for their cooperation. Even if the Ph.D. was done remotely, I collaborated with many people at KTH. Many thanks to Feng Zhang, Hao Zhao, Nazri Abdullah, and Sandra Gustavsson Nylén for their collaboration. A big warm thank you to my family, who was always supportive in my decisions. It goes without saying that I owe a lot to my partner, Olga, who was with me all this period, supporting, encouraging and motivating me. Finally, special thanks to Pasquale Stirparo, my colleague and friend, with whom I consider myself fortunate to having shared the same office for three years. The experiences and knowledge obtained from Pasquale will follow me for a lifetime. Thank you Pasquale! iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... i PhD Funding ..................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgment............................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ..............................................................................................................................v List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1. Introduction, Motives and Background ....................................................... 1 1.1 Research Problem and Goal ...................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Target Groups and Limitations ................................................................................................ 3 1.3 Correlation between Chapters and Research Papers ...................................................... 3 1.4 Thesis Outline................................................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Chapter Summary ........................................................................................................................