Providing privacy to nodes using mobile IPv6 with route optimization
View Patent ↗The present invention provides location privacy against third parties while allowing route-optimized communication between the correspondent node and the mobile node. The mobile node's home address is hidden from an external observer thereby thwarting traffic analysis based attacks where a Home Address is correlated with a Care of Address of a mobile node (MN). A “privacy label” is used in place of a home address associated with the mobile node. The privacy label is supplied by the mobile node to the correspondent node in a way that that allows the privacy label to be bound to the home address, but does not allow the home address to be visible during the exchange. The privacy label may be also used to help prevent against replay attacks.
1. A method, comprising:
creating, by an end, mobile node, a privacy label for binding a home address to a care-of-address for the end, mobile node by combining the home address with the care-of-address and a hash, wherein the privacy label hides the home address during an exchange with another node;
using the privacy label in place of the home address to communicate with the another node, in part, by employing the privacy label in a routing address header of a packet, wherein the packet is a mobile internet protocol binding update; and
storing the privacy label and the home address in a privacy label cache to associate the privacy label and the home address.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the privacy label is created using a key, a home address and a current care-of address.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein creating the privacy label further comprises XORing the key with a concatenation of the home address and the current care-of address.
4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising using a cryptographic hash function with the key.
5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising storing a mapping of the privacy label to the home address.
6. The method of claim 2 , further comprising using the privacy label in a home address option.
7. The method of claim 2 , further comprising inserting a sequence number into the privacy label to aid in preventing reply attacks.
8. An apparatus, comprising:
a network interface configured to communicate with one or more nodes;
a memory configured to store information relating to a privacy label;
a processor configured to perform actions, including
creating, by an end, mobile node, a privacy label for binding a home address to a care-of-address for the end, mobile node by combining the home address with the care-of-address and a hash, wherein the privacy label hides a home address during an exchange with another one of the nodes,
using the privacy label in place of the home address when communicating with the another one of the nodes, in part, by employing the privacy label in a routing address header of a packet, wherein the packet is a mobile internet protocol binding update, and storing the privacy label and the home address in a privacy label cache at the memory.
9. The apparatus of claim 8 , wherein the privacy label is created using a key, a home address and a current care-of address.
10. The apparatus of claim 9 , wherein creating the privacy label further comprises XORing the key with a concatenation of the home address and the current care-of address.
11. The apparatus of claim 10 , further comprising storing a mapping of the privacy label to the home address in the memory.
12. The apparatus of claim 9 , further comprising using the privacy label in a home address option.
13. The apparatus of claim 9 , further comprising inserting a sequence number into the privacy label to aid in preventing replay attacks.
14. A computer program embodied on a computer readable storage medium, the computer program being configured to control a processor to implement operations comprising:
creating, by an end, mobile node, a privacy label that binds a home address to a care-of-address for the end, mobile node by combining the home address with the care-of-address and a hash, wherein the privacy label hides the home address during an exchange with another node;
using the privacy label in place of the home address to communicate with the another node, in part, by employing the privacy label in the routing address header of a packet, wherein the packet is a mobile internet protocol binding update; and
storing the privacy label and the home address in a privacy label cache to associate the privacy label and the home address.
15. The computer program of claim 14 , wherein the privacy label is created using a key a home address and a current care-of address.
16. The computer program of claim 15 , wherein the privacy label further comprises XORing the key with a concatenation of the home address and the current care-of address.
17. The computer program of claim 15 , the method further comprising using a cryptographic hash function with the key.
18. The computer program of claim 15 , the method further comprising inserting a sequence number in the privacy label to aid in preventing replay attacks.
19. The computer program of claim 14 , the method further comprising using the privacy label in a home address option.