[LINK] a different? approach to privacy protection??
Jan Whitaker
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Wed Mar 28 10:09:30 AEDT 2012
Linkers,
One of our members pointed me to this story. I'd appreciate insight
if this is anything 'new', or just an application of an old approach
via 3rd party verification.
<http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/mobility/53654-nec-microsoft-to-develop-anonymous-authentication-for-smartphone-users>NEC,
Microsoft to develop anonymous authentication for smartphone users
<http://www.itwire.com/journalist/63-stuart-corner>Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 27 March 2012 09:14
<http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news>Your IT -
<http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/mobility>Mobility
NEC has teamed up with Microsoft, France Telecom and eight other
international institutions to provide enhanced privacy services for
smartphones using public key cryptography and 'zero-knowledge proofs'
to verify the access privileges of a smartphone user without directly
identifying the user.
According to NEC, the risk of violating user privacy is growing along
with the growth of services such as payment and location-based
services because these services verify users and terminals with IDs
that can be used to track user access and behaviour history.
"As a result, a great deal of attention is being drawn to technology
that enables service providers to confirm access privileges while
protecting the anonymity of users and terminals," NEC says.
"However, this technology requires a large amount of computation
power, comparable to a personal computer, which is a challenge for
implementing on smartphones, where computing power and battery time
are more limited." Anonymous authentication technology has the
potential to solve these problems, according to NEC.
NEC, which is the only Asia-based company contributing to project,
says it will be contributing advanced research on anonymous
authentication technology that predates its membership to the consortium.
The
<http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/en/anr-funded-project/?tx_lwmsuivibilan_pi2[CODE]=ANR-11-INSE-013>project
goes by the name LYRICS (Lightweight privacY-enhancing cRyptography
for mobIle Contactless Services). It is being funded by the French
national research agency, l'Agence Nationale de la Recherch (ANR).
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