A Real-time Secret Sharing Mechanism for Remote Assistance Using Multi-Channel Au-thentication and Jabber/XMPP

Abstract

The paper proposes personal authenti-cation for remote assistance using real-time se-cret sharing via multiple channels (denoted as PA-RSS). The proposed personal authentication scheme for remote assistance allows an assistant login one's device securely and assists people, e.g., elders or children, in operating and confi-guring their complicated e-devices easily. The proposed PA-RSS consists of i) an authentica-tion server and a Google STUN/relay server that are responsible for personal authentication and NAT traversal, respectively, ii) a target PC user that needs someone's assistance and iii) an au-thenticated assistant. Unlike past remote assis-tance via IM (Instant Messaging) or e-mail in Microsoft Windows, a real-time secret sharing mechanism via multiple Key-delivery channels is designed and implemented in the proposed PA-RSS. The assistant is able to obtain pieces of information on target PC's IP, login account (ID) and password (PWD), even he only received parts of Keys (authentication codes). Compared with HTTPs, the advantage of real-time secret sharing is able to relieve server loading without establishing heavily secure HTTPs tunnels. Be-sides, Jabber/XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) libraries will be used for NAT traver-sal, i.e., make a 'hole/tunnel' as target PCs/assistants are (both) behind a firewall or an IP-router. The proposed PA-RSS mechanism was applied for Taiwan/US patents and inte-grated in our developed product- home multi-media center. Keywords: remote assistance, multi-channel au-thentication, Shamir secret sharing, NAT traver-sal.