Browsing by Author "Hippeläinen, Sampo"

One of the problems with the modern widespread use of cloud services pertains to geographical location. Modern services often employ location-dependent content, in some cases even data that should not end up outside a certain geographical region. A cloud service provider may however have reasons to move services to other locations. An application running in a cloud environment should have a way to verify the location of both it and its data. This thesis describes a new solution to this problem by employing a permanently deployed hardware device which provides geolocation data to other computers in the same local network. A protocol suite for applications to check their geolocation is developed using the methodology of design science research. The protocol suite thus created uses many tried-and-true cryptographic protocols. A secure connection is established between an application server and the geolocation device, during which the authenticity of the device is verified. The location of data is ensured by checking that a storage server indeed has access to the data. Geographical proximity is checked by measuring round-trip times and setting limits for them. The new solution, with the protocol suite and hardware, is shown to solve the problem and fulfill strict requirements. It improves on the results presented in earlier work. A prototype is implemented, showing that the protocol suite can be feasible both in theory and practice. Details will however require further research.