Blockchain for secure location verification

© 2019 Elsevier Inc. In location-sensitive applications, dishonest users may submit fake location claims to illegally access a service or obtain benefit. To address this issue, a number of location proof mechanisms have been proposed in literature. However, they confront various security and privacy challenges, including Prover–Prover collusions (Terrorist Frauds), Prover–Witness collusions, and location privacy threats. In this paper, we utilize the unique features of the blockchain technology to design a decentralized scheme for location proof generation and verification. In the proposed scheme, a user who needs a location proof (called a prover) broadcasts a request to the neighbor devices through a short-range communication interface, e.g. Bluetooth. Those neighbor devices that decide to respond (called witnesses) start to authenticate the requesting user. We integrate an incentive mechanism into the proposed scheme to reward such witnesses. Upon successful authentication, a transaction is generated as a location proof and is broadcast onto a peer-to-peer network where it can be picked up by verifiers for final verification. Our security analysis shows that the proposed scheme achieves a reliable performance against Prover–Prover and Prover–Witness collusions. Moreover, our prototype implementation on the Android platform shows that the proposed scheme outperforms other currently deployed location proof schemes.