2016/08/13 by AbdelRahman Abdou, Abdou, AbdelRahman, Paul C. van Oorschot +2
Computer Science · #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting #Network Security and Intrusion Detection #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Spam and Phishing Detection #cs.CR #cs.NI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1608.03939
14 pages, 4 figures
openalex publication_date 2016/08/13 · arxiv created 2016/08/16 · arxiv updated 2016/08/18 · openalex created_date 2016/09/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We introduce the first known mechanism providing realtime server location verification. Its uses include enhancing server authentication (e.g., augmenting TLS) by enabling browsers to automatically interpret server location information. We describe the design of this new measurement-based technique, Server Location Verification (SLV), and evaluate it using PlanetLab. We explain how SLV is compatible with the increasing trends of geographically distributed content dissemination over the Internet, without causing any new interoperability conflicts. Additionally, we introduce the notion of (verifiable) "server location pinning" within TLS (conceptually similar to certificate pinning) to support SLV, and evaluate their combined impact using a server-authentication evaluation framework. The results affirm the addition of new security benefits to the existing SSL/TLS-based authentication mechanisms. We implement SLV through a location verification service, the simplest version of which requires no server-side changes. We also implement a simple browser extension that interacts seamlessly with the verification infrastructure to obtain realtime server location-verification results.