SAMOA: Secure and Scalable Platform for Massive-scale Mobile Applications

Abstract

Mobile applications have become the platform of choice for deploying innovative services. The interaction among users plays a central role in many of these novel applications, including multi-user games, applications for enhancing user experience in large events and touristic activities, among others. Traditional cloud-based architectures, where all interactions are mediated by servers lead to scalability and reliability issues.
In this project we propose adopting a decentralized architecture where mobile devices communicate directly and rely on cloud and edge resources for providing efficient, highly available and reliable solutions. To make these solutions a reality, we are focusing on the following three main challenges:

• Efficient communication among clients: we are developing efficient and robust overlay algorithms to support the communications among the elements of the system. These algorithms are combining the use of peer-to-peer connections among mobile client for fast interaction and the use of connections with edge and cloud node for providing robustness and ease management.
• Algorithms for partially replicated data: as each user is only interested in a small fraction of the data maintained by the system, and that the data evolves over time, it is necessary to develop algorithm for partial and dynamic replication.
• Security mechanisms: we are focusing primarily on preventing unauthorized operations, while still allowing fast peer-to-peer interaction among mobile nodes. In this context, we are working not only on algorithms for providing security guarantees but also on programming abstractions for dealing with the problem.

As a predecessor of this project, we have built Legion, a framework for extending web applications with peer-to-peer interactions. Legion relies on WebRTC, STUN and TURN to allow web clients to securely replicate data objects and synchronize peer-to-peer. Legion relies on cloud services for providing data durability - it provides an API compatible with Google Drive Realtime. This was a result of SyncFree project (2013-16, UE FP7) and LightKone project (2017-19, UE H2020, 732505).

Open Positions

There are some positions available in the context of this project:

• Post-doc position: Click here for more information.
• PhD student positions: contact Prof. Nuno Preguiça for more information.

Software

• Legion: Peer-to-peer web framework (http://legion.di.fct.unl.pt/)

Members

• Sérgio Duarte
• Bernardo Ferreira
• João Leitão (co-PI)
• João Lourenço
• Albert van der Linde
• Nuno Preguiça (PI)

References

• Legion: Enriching Internet Services with Peer-to-Peer Interactions [DOI | PDF | Bibtex]
  Albert van der Linde, Pedro Fouto, João Leitão, Nuno Preguiça, Santiago Castiñeira, and Annette Bieniusa: Proc. WWW'2017, 2017.
• Conflict-free Replicated Data Types [PDF | Bibtex]
  Marc Shapiro, Nuno Preguiça, Carlos Baquero and Marek Zawirski. In Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS 2011), October 2011.