Scalable Location Verification for Internet Clients

Secure Internet geolocation has many practical applications. For example, a mail server may use a client’s physical location information in realtime as an additional authentication, factor to augment password-based authentica- tion. Many applications employ location-aware access policies for content, such as media streaming. Online voter fraud can also be reduced if the voter’s location can be verified in realtime. Fraud reduction in e-commerce applications can be controlled if the locations of credit-card and cheque- based transactions can be verified. Most approaches known to be used in practice for location determination can be easily forged by an adversary. IP-address based techniques are prone to IP-forging tactics, in which the adversary connects through a VPN or a proxy server. GPS or WiFi Positioning System (WPS) coordinates could be forged before submission, since they often employ no integrity protection. This thesis aims at devising and evaluating scalable measurement-based lo- cation verification techniques for the Internet. Network delays between the participating client and a group of verifiers will be used to assess claims made the client about being physically present in a prescribed geographic region. The deployability and efficacy of the new techniques will be evaluated using distributed infrastructure on cloud servers.