A Multilateral Secure Payment System for Wireless LAN Hotspots

Beginning with the adoption of the de-facto standard for wireless LAN communications IEEE 802.11 in 1999 we can observe a continuous growth of public wireless LAN hotspots that provide access to the Internet for modern road warriors. Unfortunately, current hotspots still suffer from several security drawbacks. In this paper we analyse how payment schemes used in current hotspot architectures consider the security requirements of both hotspot providers and subscribers. We identify a conflict between subscribers’ wish for privacy and hotspot providers’ interest in prohibiting unlicensed (and thus unpaid) usage of the hotspot as the most challenging security objectives a future payment system has to fulfill. As a solution solving this conflict we propose a multilateral secure payment system for wireless LAN hotspots based on electronic coins invented by David Chaum. As a side effect our approach also supersedes the sophisticated authentication techniques used in current hotspot implementations, thus, simplifying the roaming between different providers’ hotspots.