SBIR Phase I: Wave: End-end Security for virtual reality and video conferencing applications (COVID-19)

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result from the ability for developers to build massively collaborative and real-time cooperative video/virtual reality applications without compromising end-end security. Lack of end-to-end encryption has been a growing problem for consumers, educational institutions and businesses collaborating remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. This project will advance the state-of-the-art by providing developers with the necessary tools to create high quality synchronous collaborative virtual environments where children, teachers, corporate professionals and even national security personnel can safely engage in work-activity without risks of privacy loss or security/data compromises. This will also benefit telemedicine where privacy is paramount from a personal perspective and also from a legal standpoint. The success of demonstrating end-end encryption for a high-performance application will result in other remote-work collaborative tools being designed with end-end security as a key feature. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project solves the problem of maintaining end-end security of content while allowing expressivity using a scripting language by separating the data plane from the control plane for such massively collaborative multimedia applications. The control plane can be programmed using a web-friendly language that can be executed on any existing user-device such as laptops/smartphones thus giving maximum portability to the app developers. The data plane always stays end-end encrypted and can be manipulated using the scripting language in a highly expressive manner. The system provides perfect forward and backward secrecy by using a fast-group rekeying protocol to maintain confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of the multimedia content. Research and development on this project will lead to breakthroughs in multiple avenues including the demonstration of a truly high performant decentralized end-end encrypted application. This will spur the demand for end-end security for any remote-work collaborative application. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.