Distributed and secure social network mobile application

Abstract

As one of the twenty-first century greatest invention, online social network (OSN) is now the central information hubs of million lives, storing and controlling data flow of millions tetra bytes, changing the way information is generating, searching and sharing among people. However, due to the more and more dependence of people to some OSN providers, the data of users are violated and manipulated by providers publicly and aggressively. Many researches recently pinpoint that decentralizing and mobile is inevitable trend of OSN. In this thesis, we explore the neat requirements of DOSN in mobile context and propose a solution satisfying them. We first examine potential weakness and problems in some novel DOSN solutions. Thereafter, the deployment of identity-based cryptography and free cloud storage service is introduced to remedy the existing challenges in existing solutions. In addition, we developed proof-of-concept implementations for the system with a clear API and expandable abilities.The experimental evaluation on the system shows that the approach of using identity-based cryptography for privacy enhancement and identity and trust management is feasible in mobile context. Moreover, the free storage clouds assists content serving well and hence reduces energy and computing resource spent on peer-to-peer mobile networks without adding extra cost.