The PRIMA project
Problems with Internet privacy and security are a major obstacle. A lot of tools and instructions to increase privacy and security are available on the net; however the normal user often does not have the time to pick the right tools and combine them.
The goal of ITO's project PRIMA is the development and integration of security and data protection technologies for todays internet. We are focussing on concepts to empower the user to actively manage his privacy. Real-world usability and compatibility with existing web services are top priorities.
We work in the following areas:
- Data Journals
- Single Sign On systems
- Reputation Management systems for web services and peer-to-peer systems
- Integration of privacy within web browsers (MozPETs)
- Security for home computers
Data Journals
The European Union's data protection regime grants all citizens the rights to revoke consent for certain usage of personal information by a service provider at any time. However, in the world of electronic services, the user often has no information who is actually the provider of a certain service.
A data journal is a tool that supports the user in managing his personal information that has been disclosed to services. It records which information was given to a certain service, tries to identify the provider and which data protection policies apply. The user can access this data at a later time to identify service providers who are misusing his information.
So far, ITO has developed two prototypes: The Data Manager is a HTTP proxie and works with any browser. The IJournal is plug-in component for the open-source web browser Mozilla.
Download and test the IJournal yourself!
MozPETs - a privacy enhanced Web Browser
We have chosen the Open Source browser Mozilla as the base of the PRIMA prototype.
The result is a web browser that has advanced privacy protection integrated without
losing compatibility with existing web services.
Our prototype, called MozPETs, is avaible here:
http://mozpets.sf.net (Sourceforge.net).
Publications
- Lars Brückner, Marco Voss: MozPETs - a Privacy enhanced Web Browser, to appear in: Proceedings of Third Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST05), St.Andrews, NB, Canada, October 2005
- Lars Brückner: Aktiver Datenschutz mit Data Journals, in: DuD, Zeitschrift für Datenschutz und Datensicherheit Ausgabe 5/2003
- Martin Mink: Sicheres Single Sign On für Webdienste. Diploma thesis, May 2003 PDF (in german)
- Lars Brückner, Wesley W. Terpstra, Jan Steffan, Uwe Wilhelm: Active Data Protection with Data Journals, to appear in the proceedings of the GI Fachtagung Sicherheit 2003
History
CeBIT 2002 : First public demonstration of the Data Manager.May 2003 : The IJournal is released for download.
Partners
- T-Systems from July to December 2001