Greetings! My name is Abhilasha. I am currently pursuing my
doctoral degree in
Computer Science at Purdue University (Finishing October 2007!). My thesis
research investigates the challenges in Identity Management (IdM) with special
focus on the problem of Identity Theft. My research statement elaborates on the
challenges of this area and my IdM webpage has information on the current
projects and papers. My research advisor is Prof.Elisa Bertino. We are part of the
Center for Education and Research inInformation Assurance and Security (CERIAS).
I hope you find good information related to IdM and our research initiatives from
this website. Please feel free to email me at :
bhargav AT cerias DOT purdue DOT edu with any questions and comments. jak widoczny na zdjęciu obok przebi¶nieg
Identity Management and Theft Protection
Introduction
Digital identity management technology is fundamental in customizing user experience, protecting privacy, underpinning accountability and compliance in today's highly collaborative information infrastructure. Digital identity is defined as the digital representation of the information known about an individual or organization. Identity management is challenging due to conflicting requirements. First, identity attributes need to be shared to facilitate efficient access control.Contrarily, they also need to be protected from potential misuse from attacks like identity theft. By identity theft we mean the act of impersonating others' identities by presenting stolen identifiers. In addition, there is also strong need of mechanisms to protect the privacy of such information. For example, when an individual's digital ID includes his/her medical history, which consists of disjoint medical records from various health institutions, protecting this information from impersonation attacks is not sufficient since the mere knowledge of the existence of the medical information leaks valuable information of the individual.
An emerging approach to address issues related to identity management is based on the notion of federations [Liberty Alliance, CardSpace, Shibboleth, WS-*]. The goal of federations is to provide users with protected environments to federate identities by the proper management of identity attributes. Federations provide a controlled method by which federation members can provide more integrated and complete services to a qualified group of individuals within certain sets of business transactions. By controlling the scope of access to participating sites, by enabling secure, cross-domain transmission of user's personal information, federations can make more difficult the perpetration of identity frauds, as well as their frequency, and the potential impact of these frauds.
My Thesis Research
The goal of my thesis is to develop techniques and systems for digital identity protection from theft and incorrect use. The research aims to provide a strong theoretical foundation on which the solutions are built as well as prototype implementations. We have developed a fundamental approach for ID theft protection.
To this extent we delineated the requirements of an identity theft protected system and determined which tools and methodologies can be used to achieve such requirements. We provide a progressive and flexible approach for enabling authentication and we are currently implementing two prototypes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the architecture. In particular, we have designed a set of novel cryptographic protocols which effectively achieve a multi-factor authentication and provide strong authentication. In our recent work, we also show how to preserve user privacy without jeopardizing security with zero knowledge proofs, distributed hash tables and watermarking. We are currently investigating the extension of the main approach with biometrics mechanisms eventually using biometric keys in the zero knowledge proofs, and developing a policy language specific to user authentication. Finally, we are extending the ID theft solution for storage and protection of health information.
A desired paradigm
The following simple yet profound poem by Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate, is revered and is a source of inspiration for many. It was interesting that after I recited this poem for my husband he remarked that the closest thing that he though comes to the desired properties given in the poem seems like the current day internet. Hope you like it too:--
Where the mind is without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
-- Rabindranath Tagore ,( from the book Gitanjali)