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Network Security

Secure Active Network Prototypes

Objective:
Current active network research efforts propose to make the network packets themselves an active and dynamic part of the network, so the services offered by the network evolve as the packets travel through the network. The dynamic and proactive nature of an active network increases the security risks of unauthorized or destructive modification of the overall network behavior. It is important that security issues be considered now, as active network efforts progress, rather than being retrofitted after active network designs have solidified. Although each of the current active network efforts has stated its recognition of the importance of security, none has as yet addressed security in full. TIS will investigate the security issues applicable in an active network, define security requirements, develop mechanisms to meet the requirements and develop prototypes that demonstrate security solutions.

Approach:
An active packet injects new functionality or services into the network as it passes through the network by modifying each network node's state and behavior, either temporarily or permanently. We will focus our investigation on security requirements and mechanisms governing the authorization for modification of an individual node and access to its resources. We will address such problems as authorization of the packet's ability to inject new functionality, the node's authorization to retrieve and use the new functionality, and methods for ensuring the integrity and denoting the quality of the code implementing the new functionality.

The starting point for our series of prototypes will be an active network operating in a single administrative domain with the injected feature deployed inside the packet itself. All authorizations will be based on attributes represented in the packet container. We will develop the security requirements in this scenario and the attributes needed as a basis for enforcement of the requirements. We will design and implement prototypes of mechanisms to provide enforcement of the security requirements. We will iteratively relax the assumptions to make the security issues more complex, e.g., multiple security and administrative domains, feature code deployed from some location outside the packet, authorization that is distributed, etc. We will design and implement prototypes of the richer scenarios as well.

Recent Accomplishments:

• New Start

Current Plan:

• TIS will provide an analysis of for the initial secure active network prototype by December 1997. This analysis will provide security attributes and mechanisms as well as a policy basis applicable the initial TIS active network prototype(s).
• An initial implementation of security services and mechanisms for an active network capability on an enterprise scale will be developed by TIS. This initial demonstration will provide valuable insight for the Defense active network community into the complexities encountered implementing security services into one type of active network.
• TIS will initiate design of policy language for distribution of policies in an active network. The design will incorporate knowledge gained by TIS and other active network community participants. The policy language will provide a basis for Defense researchers to express multiple security policy requirements over a number of different active network experiments.