SureThing CONCLUSION
Today, September 30th 2022, is the final official day of the SureThing project.
Here is a project summary:
The SureThing project addressed a timely Internet of Things security need: creating and validating location certificates, i.e., digitally-signed documents that attest the presence of a user at a specific location, at a specific time and date.
The core results of the project were: the SureThing framework with data schemas and application programming interfaces, and the location proof techniques and their respective witness models.
The framework data and operations allow the reuse and portability of data between applications.
The location proof techniques and witness models allow multiple ways to validate location, allowing a security-in-depth approach, as multiple techniques can be combined for greater security.
The project was validated with two use cases: Smart Tourism and Smart Taxes.
The Smart Tourism produced several versions of the CROSS system, encompassing a gamified mobile application, with cloud-based application and database servers, location certificate transparency servers for long-term storage of the location certificates, and reputation server to store information about the way users contribute as witnesses to the system.
The latest version was made available with a much improved user interface and made available as a university campus tour.
The Smart Taxes produced the STOP system which received two iterations. In the latest one, the system incorporated qualified digital signatures, with the citizen card, meeting the requirements of producing stronger location proofs.
Additionaly, another use case for public-facing services was produced: SurePresence, as a way to have a location certification kiosk, to issue presence certification for medical appointments.
This also made use of the citizen card, but only for identification.
The delivered SureThing framework gives developers the choice to use both infrastructure-based or peer-based techniques for location proofs. The works also provide qualified signatures for use cases that require signatures with legal value. During the project, a total of 17 master dissertation were completed, with 7 international conferences publications (above the original target), and with 8 national conferences.
I would like to leave a heartfelt thank you to all the team. Of course, I also thank FCT and the Portuguese and European peoples, for funding science and technology research.
The project has concluded but some of the scientific work is still ongoing. We also have some pending submissions to an international conference, and are hopeful the work will be published.
Stay tuned and all the best!