Hardened Registration Process for Participatory Sensing

Abstract: Participatory sensing systems need to gather information from a largenumber of participants. However, the openness of the system is a doubleedgedsword: by allowing practically any user to join, the system can beabused by an attacker who introduces a large number of virtual devices.This work proposes a hardened registration process for participatory sensingto raise the bar: registrations are screened through a number of defensivemeasures, towards rejecting spurious registrations that do not correspondto actual devices. This deprives an adversary from a relatively easytake-over and, at the same time, allows a flexible and open registrationprocess. The defensive measures are incorporated in the participatorysensing application.