The Butt of the Iceberg: Hidden Security Problems of Ubiquitous Systems

Abstract

In Kurt Vonnegut’s eponymous novel, there is a moment when an adult demonstrates Cat’s Cradle, the art of making patterns with a loop of string held between two hands, to a small child. On dropping the string, the adult says “Look: no cat, no cradle”. The child is naturally dismayed.

In a sense, ubiquitous systems are as ephemeral as the Cat’s Cradle. The infrastructure to support them is as subtle, and complex, and the trust we have in them as fragile. This paper reveals the hidden problems in store for security in ubiquitous systems. A crucial aspect we wish to stress is that there is a phase change as one moves from classical distributed computing into this new environment: the mere shift in quantity of components is enough to lead to qualitative changes in aspects of security. Moreover, there are inherent qualitative shifts.