The Net Rat - Rethinking Connected Services for Increased Security

Bernd Prünster, Florian Reimair, Andreas Reiter

2017

Abstract

Traditional desktop computers have been outranked in terms of usage numbers by mobile devices. Still, many popular mobile-first services rely on workflows designed decades ago for a different environment. When relying on cloud-based services, privacy and data protection issues need to be considered. Mostly, however, one can choose between either well-supported legacy applications or innovative niche solutions. In this paper, we introduce the Net Rat, a framework enabling a seamless transition from existing centralised setups to decentralised state-of-the-art services, increasing security while maintaining backwards compatibility to well-established legacy services. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with a case study focusing on the decentralisation of the e-mail service—until now, this failed due to missing backward compatibility. A security analysis demonstrates how our approach reaches its goal of protecting user data through decentralisation. The Net Rat is built on a solid foundation as result of a security-first design. The results of this work clearly show the feasibility of decentralising existing services and highlight how well-established services can be improved. Our approach also presents opportunities to develop new services based on a solid foundation.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Prünster B., Reimair F. and Reiter A. (2017). The Net Rat - Rethinking Connected Services for Increased Security . In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 6: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2017) ISBN 978-989-758-259-2, pages 375-383. DOI: 10.5220/0006469103750383

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt17,
author={Bernd Prünster and Florian Reimair and Andreas Reiter},
title={The Net Rat - Rethinking Connected Services for Increased Security},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 6: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2017)},
year={2017},
pages={375-383},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006469103750383},
isbn={978-989-758-259-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 6: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2017)
TI - The Net Rat - Rethinking Connected Services for Increased Security
SN - 978-989-758-259-2
AU - Prünster B.
AU - Reimair F.
AU - Reiter A.
PY - 2017
SP - 375
EP - 383
DO - 10.5220/0006469103750383