Robust decentralized authentication for public keys and geographic location:

Authentication has traditionally been done either in a decentralized manner with human assistance or automatically through a centralized security infrastructure. In the security infrastructure approach, a central trusted authority takes on the responsibility of authenticating participants within its domain of control. While the security infrastructure approach works well in traditional organizations, it does not address the needs of open membership systems. We propose automatic decentralized authentication mechanisms for peer-to-peer systems, email systems, and ad-hoc networks. Our byzantine fault tolerant public-key authentication protocol (BPKA) provides decentralized authentication to peer-to-peer systems with honest majority. Authentication is done over an insecure asynchronous network without using trusted third parties or human input. We also authenticate public keys in the email environment through our social-group key authentication protocol (SGKA). The protocol provides end-to-end authentication at the email client without using infrastructure or centralized authorities. Finally, location authentication in ad-hoc networks is proposed through our geographical secure path routing protocol (GSPR). The protocol authenticates geographic locations of anonymous nodes in order to provide location authentication and anonymity simultaneously.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 121o-128)by Vivek Patha