Session 2: Paper 1
 | Practical Security for Rural Internet Kiosks |
Authors: Sumair Ur Rahman (University of Waterloo); Urs Hengartner (University of Waterloo); Usman Ismail (University of Waterloo); Srinivasan Keshav (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: Rural Internet kiosks typically provide weak security guarantees and therefore cannot support secure web access or transaction-oriented applications such as banking and bill payment. We present a practical, unobtrusive and easy-to-use security architecture for rural Internet kiosks that uses a combination of physical and cryptographic mechanisms to protect user data and kiosk infrastructure. Our contributions include (a) a detailed threat analysis of rural Internet kiosks, (b) a security architecture for rural Internet kiosks that does not require any specialized hardware features in kiosks, and (c) an application-independent and backward-compatible security API for securely sending and receiving data between kiosks and the Internet that can operate over disconnection-tolerant links.