Enclave: Promoting Unobtrusive and Secure Mobile Communications with a Ubiquitous Electronic World

Abstract

Thanks to smartphones’ mass popularity in our society, our world is surrounded by ubiquitous electronic signals. These signals originate from static objects such as buildings and stores and mobile objects such as people or vehicles. Yet it is difficult to readily access electronic information. Current wireless communications focus on reliable transmission from sources to destinations, which entails tedious connection establishment and network configuration. This forms a virtual electronic barrier among people that makes unobtrusive communication difficult. In addition, there is concern about interacting with the electronic world due to such interactions’ insecurity. To safely remove the electronic barrier, we propose Enclave, a delegate wireless device that helps people’s smartphones communicate unobtrusively. We realize Enclave using two key supporting technologies, NameCast and PicComm. NameCast uses wireless device names to unobtrusively transmit short messages without connection establishment. PicComm uses the transfer of visual images to securely deliver electronic information to people’s smartphones. We implement Enclave on commercial off-the-shelf smartphones. Our experimental evaluation illustrates its potential for smartphone data protection and unobtrusive and secure communication.