Threshold-Based Distance Bounding

Conventional access control mechanisms usually rely on the use of a single token for user authentication, and are generally vulnerable to relay attacks. In addition, these systems often suffer from usabil-ity issues. Since they are centrally managed, key management tends to be a rather slow and cumbersome process in this setting. In this paper, we propose a threshold-based location-aware ac-cess control mechanism. It combines the concepts of secret shar-ing and distance bounding protocols to tackle various security vul-nerabilities. Our proposed solution offers protection against any set of (t − 1) compromised user’s devices, with t being an ad-justable threshold number. It supports user-centered management, since users can alter the set of personal devices, and can tune the se-curity parameters of the access control scheme towards the required level of security and resilience. 1