What3Words Geo Encryption: An Alternative Approach to Location based Encryption

Julian Dreyer, Ralf Tönjes

2020

Abstract

Identity Based Encryption (IBE) is a steadily emerging field of research in the cryptographical domain. A special flavor of IBE called Location Based Encryption (LBE) includes a given location attribute to add additional access control to the encrypted entity. The main goal is to allow an entity to decrypt the ciphertext only and only if the correct location information is provided. This allows to control the access based on the position of the data user. Existing solutions for LBE make use of the conventional Global Positioning System (GPS). Though, conventional GPS solutions are known to be influenced by an artificially added error, resulting in inaccuracy of the location data. This will consequently require the LBE scheme to include a level of tolerance, as the GPS coordinates may slightly diverge between different points in time. In order to mitigate this problem by design, an alternative approach to LBE is proposed to add additional tolerance. The approach presented in this paper makes use of the What3Words location system, which offers the required tolerance for the decryption and thereby mitigating the problem of GPS inaccuracy. A following study then evaluates the real-world performance of the new encryption algorithm.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Dreyer J. and Tönjes R. (2020). What3Words Geo Encryption: An Alternative Approach to Location based Encryption.In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security - Volume 1: IoTBDS, ISBN 978-989-758-426-8, pages 445-452. DOI: 10.5220/0009791904450452

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iotbds20,
author={Julian Dreyer and Ralf Tönjes},
title={What3Words Geo Encryption: An Alternative Approach to Location based Encryption},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security - Volume 1: IoTBDS,},
year={2020},
pages={445-452},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009791904450452},
isbn={978-989-758-426-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security - Volume 1: IoTBDS,
TI - What3Words Geo Encryption: An Alternative Approach to Location based Encryption
SN - 978-989-758-426-8
AU - Dreyer J.
AU - Tönjes R.
PY - 2020
SP - 445
EP - 452
DO - 10.5220/0009791904450452