User-Centric Identity Management Based on Secure Elements

The security of large applications and distributed systems is heavily dependent on Identity Management models and infrastructures. In this paper we introduce the Identity Management approach developed in the SecFuNet project, which emphasizes the use of smartcards to user authentication and user-centric attribute delivery policies. In current identity models, user attributes are stored in identity providers and any trust relationship may spread user information across trust networks formed among identity providers. In our approach, the user controls the release of his attributes that are stored in his own smartcard. Also, the approach makes use of secure elements and virtualization for protecting user information. This paper describes aspects of our authentication model and discusses the results obtained with a prototype implementation.