Privacy Preserving Cloud-Based Computing Platform (PPCCP) for using location based services

Abstract

Mobile cloud computing (MCC) is an emerging trend which combines the benefits of cloud computing with the mobile devices. This new technology not only offers tremendous computing power and storage to the mobile devices with limited processing and storage capabilities but also increases the affordability and reliability. Despite providing various benefits, MCC is still in its early stages in providing trust guarantees to a user. Location-Based Services (LBS), on the other hand, are those services which operate on a user's location to provide him/her services such as finding nearby restaurants, hospitals, bus terminal and ATMs, to name a few. While a user's location is mandatory for LBS to work, it imposes serious threats to the user's privacy. In this paper we propose a privacy preserving cloud-based computing architecture for using location-based services. On one hand, our architecture provides a secure mechanism for using LBS services anonymously while on the other hand it utilizes untrusted but fast and reliable cloud services for its implementation in an efficient and effective manner. Moreover, we provide various attack scenarios and show that how our architecture preserves the privacy of the user and is difficult to compromise. © 2013 IEEE.