Sharing cloud services: user authentication for social enhancement of home networking

A user centric approach to authentication for home networks is proposed. A zero-knowledge-proof (ZKP) authentication is used to leverage the emerging cloud infrastructure allowing users to temporarily transfer their service and content rights within a trusted environment such as a friend's home. This approach enables the sharing of personalized content and more sophisticated network-based services over a conventional TCP/IP infrastructure. Experimental results derived from a reference prototype are presented. These demonstrate the practicality of the underlying approach. The potential to develop new cloud services for "social" home networks is also discussed.