Paper in a peer-reviewed national conference
Location Certificate Transparency for third-party-verifiable location proofs
Location Certificate, Certificate Authority, Digital Certificate, Location, Certificate Transparency, Security
Authors
Pedro Carvalho, Leonardo Rocha, Samih Eisa, Miguel L. Pardal
Conference
INForum. Lisbon, Portugal. 2021
Resources
Abstract
The vast expansion of mobile and ubiquitous computing has led to the daily and widespread use of Location-Based Services. These services detect locations and are trusted by applications. However, the services may fail or be subject to fraud. This is a problem for critical applications that rely on accurate location data. One approach to deal with location spoofing is to require the use of Location Certificates (LCerts). LCerts allow any party to independently verify the location claim and digital signatures. However, by themselves, they do not provide trusted storage and verification at a later date. In this work we propose a Location Certificate Transparency framework to provide accountability to all the entities involved in location proofs: provers, witnesses and verifiers. We developed a tamper-proof ledger based on Merkle-Trees and provide APIs for the storage, retrieval and verification of LCerts by monitors and auditors, to further protect end-users from malicious parties.