Information Hiding for pervasive trusted authentication

Pervasive computing promises rich and seamless interaction with the surrounding computing environment. However, the ubiquitous environment presents a new security challenge. Authentication is a cornerstone of security. This paper proposes a secure authentication model based on Information Hiding and implements an approach for hiding and restoring the authentication information using IP header of TCP/IP packets. The proposed model, showing Information Hiding can play for authentication in a pervasive environment, may be generalized for trustworthy authentication of security devices such as firewalls. Finally we analyze the security properties of proposed model and approach, which shows that the model is feasible.