| Ansprechpartner am Lehrstuhl: | Michael Dürr |
| Website: | http://vegas.mobile.ifi.lmu.de/ |
Motivation
A fundamental problem of present Online Social Networks (OSNs) is their insufficient support for security and privacy as well as mobility at the same time. Uses and abuses of Facebook, Google, and other major OSN providers frequently make the headlines. A major problem are centralized structures: unlimited access to (public) profile attributes often results in unsolicited advertisement, unwanted friendship establishment and, as a worst case, to attacks based on social engineering. As OSNs migrate to the mobile domain, even location information becomes accessible, i.e., social engineering and data mining get more effective.
A step towards a satisfactory OSN is Vegas, a mobile and decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) OSN with security and privacy in mind. Vegas reflects social relationships in the same way as we experience them in reality and gets its users back into complete control of information they share (informational self-determination). Due to the combination of decentralization and strong cryptography, Vegas provides for privacy, security, and complete user anonymity at the same time.
