GeoGuard: UWB Timing-Encoded Key Reconstruction for Location-Dependent, Geographically Bounded Decryption
Kunal Mukherjee

TL;DR
GeoGuard introduces a location-dependent cryptosystem that encodes decryption keys in UWB packet timing, ensuring only users within a specific geographic area can decrypt content, thus preventing unauthorized redistribution.
Contribution
It presents a novel timing-encoded cryptographic protocol that ties decryption capability to physical location using UWB signals, enhancing content security.
Findings
Successfully maps AES keys onto UWB timing patterns
Ensures only authorized locations can reconstruct decryption keys
Prevents eavesdroppers outside the region from decrypting content
Abstract
Digital content distribution and propitiatory research driven industries face persistent risks from intellectual property theft and unauthorized redistribution. Conventional encryption schemes such as AES, TDES, ECC, and ElGamal provide strong cryptographic guarantees, but they remain fundamentally agnostic to where decryption takes place. In practice, this means that once a decryption key is leaked or intercepted, any adversary can misuse the key to decrypt the protected content from any location. This paper presents, GeoGuard, a location-dependent cryptosystem in which the decryption key is not transmitted as data but is implicitly encoded in the precise time-of-flight differences of ultra-wideband (UWB) data transmission packets. The system leverages precise timing hardware and a custom Timing-encoded Cryptographic Keying (TiCK) protocol to map a 32-byte SHA-256 AES key onto…
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Taxonomy
TopicsChaos-based Image/Signal Encryption · Cryptographic Implementations and Security · User Authentication and Security Systems
