On non-cooperative location privacy

Abstract

In mobile networks, authentication is a required primitive of the majority of security protocols. However, an adversary can track the location of mobile nodes by monitoring pseudonyms used for authentication. A frequently proposed solution to protect location privacy suggests that mobile nodes collectively change their pseudonyms in regions called mix zones. Because this approach is costly, self-interested mobile nodes might decide not to cooperate and could thus jeopardize the achievable location privacy. In this paper, we analyze the non-cooperative behavior of mobile nodes with a game-theoretic model, where each player aims at maximizing its location privacy at a minimum cost. We first analyze the Nash equilibria in n-player complete information games. Because mobile nodes in a privacy-sensitive system do not know their opponents' payoffs, we then consider incomplete information games. We establish that symmetric Bayesian-Nash equilibria exist with simple threshold strategies in n-player games and derive the equilibrium strategies. By means of numerical results, we show that mobile nodes become selfish when the cost of changing pseudonym is small, whereas they cooperate more when the cost of changing pseudonym increases. Finally, we design a protocol -the PseudoGame protocol -based on the results of our analysis.

Modelling and Simulation on Location Privacy Preserving Based on Dynamic Periodic Pseudonym

“…Selfish vehicles tend to do not change their pseudonym if they reach the desired privacy level. The vehicle refuses to cooperate with other vehicles while changing the pseudonym [11], which results in reducing the privacy protection level.…”

EPS: An Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Service Searching Scheme for Smart Community

“…As a defense technique, the multiple-pseudonym technique providing both identity and location privacy is widely applied in literatures [13]- [16]. Freudiger et al [14] developed a usercentric location privacy model to measure the evolution of location privacy over time, and they derived the equilibrium strategies on changing pseudonyms for each user from the game-theoretic perspective. Beresford et al [17], [18] explored the concept of mix zone and utilized pseudonym techniques to preserve user location privacy.…”

“…1 [14], [21], [22] is adopted, i.e., u i is assigned with a set of asymmetric key pairs and uses the alternatively changing public keys as the user's pseudonyms { pi d i } for the data communication. The unique identity can be protected as only literally-meaningless pseudonyms are exposed to the public.…”

Privacy-Aware Message Exchanges for Geographically Routed Human Movement Networks

“…Several protocols (cf. [7,24]) achieve location privacy by relying on ephemeral pseudoidentities. Such approaches provide unlinkability by impeding an adversary's ability to associate different broadcasts with the same node.…”