Date Available

2-22-2012

Year of Publication

2011

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Document Type

Master's Thesis

College

Engineering

Department/School/Program

Computer Science

First Advisor

Dr. Mukesh Singhal

Abstract

An online payment system allows a customer to make a payment to an online merchant or a service provider. Payment gateways, a channel between customers and payment processors, use various security tools to secure a customer’s payment information, usually debit or credit card information, during an online payment. However, the security provided by a payment gateway cannot completely protect a customer’s payment information when a merchant also has the ability to obtain the payment information in some form. Furthermore, not all merchants provide a secure payment environment to their customers and, despite having a standard payment policy, adhere to it. Consequently, this exposes a customer’s payment information to risks of being compromised or misused by merchants or stolen by hackers and spammers. In this thesis we propose a new approach to payment systems in which a customer’s payment information cannot be obtained by a merchant. A customer sends his payment information directly to a payment gateway and a payment gateway, upon verifying the transaction, sends a payment to the appropriate merchant. We use the Pedersen commitment scheme along with dual signatures to securely transfer funds to a merchant and protect a customer’s payment information from any Internet vulnerabilities.

Download

Share

COinS