NEXT GENERATION NETWORKS: HUMAN-AIDED AND PRIVACY-DRIVEN Raphael C.-W. Phan * Loughborough University LE11 3TU, UK r.phan@lboro.ac.uk Jean-Philippe Aumasson † FHNW 5210 Windisch, Switzerland jeanphilippe.aumasson@gmail.com ABSTRACT New generation networks (NGNs) deployed in the next five to ten years will integrate a myriad of underlying network tech- nologies into a common internet protocol (IP) backbone. We put forward two theses on how NGNs will evolve based on re- cent trends in increasing ubiquity and the need for increased security. We assert that NGNs will be increasingly human- aided and privacy-driven. We discuss how these points are inter-related, and then we culminate this paper with a model that allows formal analysis of network privacy, including the tracing of entities. Index Terms— NGN, evolution, cycle, human-aided, secu- rity, privacy, security model, standards 1. INTRODUCTION: MOVING TO A UBIQUITOUS PACKET-BASED NETWORK A Next Generation Network (NGN) [1] refers in essence to the network architectural evolution over the next five to ten years. NGNs will be integrated, packet-based networks over phone, cable, satellite, or mobile networks that communicate converged multimedia information comprising voice, video, text, and other data. The shift from communication over analog telephone lines to a converged internet protocol (IP) backbone comprised of diverse network types means a shift from circuit-based voice to packet-based (multimedia) data. NGNs have support for generalized mobility and will provide for services including multimedia communication and mes- saging, video content distribution and streaming, interactive gaming, location-based services, mobile internet access and mobile TV. One of the possibilities provided by this seamless integration is the effortless porting between offline and online access to the network to the extent that the user is in fact oblivious to when he is connected. The user’s device connects or discon- nects from a network transparently, whenever necessary, and without any initiation by the user. This gives an increased sense of ubiquity in terms of the user’s connection to the net- work via his personal devices. * Work done while the author was with the Security & Cryptography Lab (LASEC), Ecole Polytechnique F´ ed´ erale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. † Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under project no. 113329. 1.1. NGNs: Human-aided and Privacy-driven In this paper, we put forward two theses regarding the evolu- tion of NGN in the future: • Human-aided: NGNs will involve humans as separate entities, not just as end-users external to a network. This leads to the convergence of social science aspects into the technical design and analysis of future NGNs. • Privacy-driven: NGNs will be privacy-driven as they become more seamlessly integrated among human societies. Every object (human or machine) that a person interacts with may potentially allow him to be tracked. This will require a privacy analysis model where a network protocol entity can be either a human or machine—basically anything that is connected to a network. We culminate the paper by describing a formal model that allows us to analyze privacy in networks. 2. TRENDS FOR EMERGING NETWORKS 2.1. Towards Human-Aided Networks Computers have taken over the many human tasks due to their higher efficiency, effectiveness and better suitability for mundane procedures. Yet, their interaction with humans has remained, mostly where humans are the end-users, because computers typically replaced humans that were used for in- formation processing. Clearly, this bears resemblance to the interaction between digital and analog counterparts. Indeed, as our physical world is analog and so no matter how much digital the information processing and communication becomes digital, at the other end the information needs to be converted back to analog sig- nal form in order to be used in the “real world” again. Our thesis here is that just as many of nature’s processes go in cycles, so too does the information processing world. To elaborate, networks are moving towards having digital enti- ties interact with human users not just at the terminal points but throughout the process at different intermediate points. The reason is not that humans are becoming more efficient, but that there are so-called out-of-band tasks for which only humans are capable.