peer reviewed

Efficient and secure message dissemination plays an important role during a disaster environment. Name-based publish/subscribe systems, especially role-based names, using principles of Information-Centricity provide an efficient frame-work for communications among first responders. However, a challenge is maintaining confidentiality during communication. We have developed an encryption framework that leverages graph-based naming systems which provides role-based communication among first responders. Our framework is built on top of the dynamic role-based names and can be implemented using attribute-based encryption (ABE) or public key encryption (PKE). In this demo, we show the operations of our framework in a typical scenario of first responders using the application.

Name-based publish/subscribe systems using Information-Centric Networking (ICN) principles can provide a flexible and efficient framework for communication in disaster situations. Efficient, secure dissemination of information can play a critical role in disaster management. But, secure and authenticated group communications that maintain confidentiality and integrity remain a challenge. In this paper, we design a flexible and efficient encryption framework SAFE that leverages graph-based naming frameworks for providing role-based communication among first responders. We study the suitability of message-oriented encryption where the sender leverages the name hierarchy, and compare it with a key-oriented encryption scheme that requires the receiver to utilize appropriate keys to decrypt based on the publisher-targeted name for the message. Both encryption schemas can be built with attribute-based encryption (ABE) or public key encryption (PKE) implementations. We find message-oriented encryption provides the needed flexibility for dynamic environments when communicating with members changes frequently. With message-oriented encryption, we further address key revocation and support for infrastructure-less environments in disaster situations and consider the tradeoff between flexibility and optimization for large relatively static communication groups. We evaluate both encryption schemas built on top of ABE and PKE. We examine the key generation time, ciphertext length, encryption, and decryption time, and see that SAFE's design is the most suitable for large and dynamically changing groups.