Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 9th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2013, Sydney, NSW, Australia, September 25-28, 2013, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

CamTalk: A Bidirectional Light Communications Framework for Secure Communications on Smartphones

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-319-04283-1_3,
        author={Mengjun Xie and Liang Hao and Kenji Yoshigoe and Jiang Bian},
        title={CamTalk: A Bidirectional Light Communications Framework for Secure Communications on Smartphones},
        proceedings={Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 9th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2013, Sydney, NSW, Australia, September 25-28, 2013, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={SECURECOMM},
        year={2014},
        month={6},
        keywords={bidirectional light communications mobile application secure communication key exchange},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-319-04283-1_3}
    }
    
  • Mengjun Xie
    Liang Hao
    Kenji Yoshigoe
    Jiang Bian
    Year: 2014
    CamTalk: A Bidirectional Light Communications Framework for Secure Communications on Smartphones
    SECURECOMM
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-04283-1_3
Mengjun Xie1,*, Liang Hao1,*, Kenji Yoshigoe1,*, Jiang Bian2,*
  • 1: University of Arkansas at Little Rock
  • 2: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
*Contact email: mxxie@ualr.edu, lxhao@ualr.edu, kxyoshigoe@ualr.edu, jbian@uams.edu

Abstract

In this paper we present CamTalk, a novel bidirectional communications framework using front-facing cameras and displays of smartphones. In the CamTalk framework, two smartphones exchange information via barcodes: information is encoded into barcodes that are displayed on the screen of the origin device, and those barcodes are captured by the front-facing camera of the destination device and decoded; Both devices can send and receive barcodes at the same time. The general design of data transmission enables CamTalk to support a wide range of applications. More importantly, CamTalk’s communications channels are short-range, highly directional, fully observational, and immune to electromagnetic interference, which makes CamTalk very appealing for secure communications and bootstrapping security applications. We have implemented CamTalk on the Android platform and conducted extensive experiments to evaluate its performance on both Android smartphones and tablets. Our experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of CamTalk in short-range wireless communications.