Facilitating the Delegation of Use for Private Devices in the Era of the Internet of Wearable Things

Abstract

The Internet undergoes a fundamental transformation as billions of connected “things” surround us and embed themselves into the fabric of our everyday lives. However, this is only the beginning of true convergence between the realm of humans and that of machines, which materializes with the advent of connected machines worn by humans, or wearables. The resulting shift from the Internet of Things to the Internet of Wearable Things (IoWT) brings along a truly personalized user experience by capitalizing on the rich contextual information, which wearables produce more than any other today’s technology. The abundance of personally identifiable information handled by wearables creates an unprecedented risk of its unauthorized exposure by the IoWT devices, which fuels novel privacy challenges. In this paper, after reviewing the relevant contemporary background, we propose efficient means for the delegation of use applicable to a wide variety of constrained wearable devices, so that to guarantee privacy and integrity of their data. Our efficient solutions facilitate contexts when one would like to offer their personal device for temporary use (delegate it) to another person in a secure and reliable manner. In connection to the proposed protocol suite for the delegation of use, we also review the possible attack surfaces related to advanced wearables.