An Authenticated Privacy-Preserving Attribute Matchmaking Protocol for Mobile Social Networks

10.6633/IJNS.201505.17(3).15

Solomon Sarpong；Chun-Xiang Xu；Xiao-Jun Zhang

authentication ； certification ； matchmaking ； nonspoofability ； user-profiling

International Journal of Network Security

17卷3期（2015 / 05 / 01）

357 - 364

英文

Matchmaking on mobile social networks has evolved over the years since its advent. On MSN, important, personal, private and sensitive information are shared. This has necessitated the need for efficient and privacy-preserving matchmaking protocols so as to prevent unintended persons from accessing such information. In most of the existing matchmaking protocols the inputs are private and personal. Hence malicious participants may choose their sets arbitrarily so as to learn more information about the input of an honest individual. As an improvement on the existing matchmaking protocols, we propose an authenticated hybrid matchmaking protocol that will help match-pair seekers find the most appropriate pair without leaking private and sensitive information to unintended persons. In our protocol, attributes used are certified by a certification authority. Also, the initiator sets a threshold number of common attributes that an individual should have to qualify as a match-pair. With the use of certification of attributes to ensure that the inputs are not arbitrary and a preset threshold number of common attributes defined, an initiator can adequately find the best pair(s) without leaking any private and sensitive information. Furthermore, our protocol has the ability to resist semi-honest and malicious attacks.