A Security Framework for Distributed Brokering Systems

Loosely coupled, globally scalable distributed systems, including both peer-to-peer systems and computational grids, rely on the transmission of messages and events that may transverse many point-topoint connections and may need to reach several destinations. The identity of entities, the authorization to send or receive certain messages, and the privacy and integrity of those messages must all be established. In this paper we present a system design that addresses the security requirements for messaging systems that employ the generalized topic-based publish/subscribe paradigm. In particular, we address initial authentication and maintenance of identity, scalable topic security, and message-level security that protects messages over multiple hops with varying underlying transport security. We also review several potential forms of attacks on the system and the steps we take to thwart such attacks. Student Status: Yan Yan and Yi Huang are full time graduate students. Submission for REGULAR PRESENTATION