Subtransport Level: The Right Place for End-to-End Security Mechanisms

Abstract

We argue that end-to-end authentication and privacy in loosely-coupled distributed systems are not only achievable by mechanisms at the host-to-host (i.e., subtransport) level under generally satisfiable conditions, but that this solution can be more advantageous than those based on security mechanisms at higher levels of the protocol hierarchy in terms of both functionality and performance. We introduce a model of communication security and a subtransport-level protocol called ADP (the Authenticated Datagram Protocol), which provides end-to-end authentication and privacy consistently with the definitions of the model. We then discuss the advantages of the subtransport approach, and present some experimental results from the measurement of a prototype of ADP that confirm the expected performance benefits of this approach.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1987
Accession Number
ADA619419

Entities

People

  • David P. Anderson
  • Domenico Ferrari
  • P. V. Rangan

Organizations

  • University of California, Berkeley

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Asymetric Encryption
  • Authentication
  • Computer Network Security
  • Computer Networks
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Cryptography
  • Data Storage Systems
  • Distributed Computing
  • Hierarchies
  • Information Operations
  • Models
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Science
  • Secure Communications
  • Security
  • Transport Protocols

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Operations Research