JXTA security in basic peer operations

Open Access Documen

An anonymity layer for JXTA service

Open Access Documen

Secure identity management in structured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks

Structured Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks were proposed to solve routing problems of big distributed infrastructures. But the research community has been questioning their security for years. Most prior work in security services was focused on secure routing, reputation systems, anonymity, etc. However, the proper management of identities is an important prerequisite to provide most of these security services. The existence of anonymous nodes and the lack of a centralized authority capable of monitoring (and/or punishing) nodes make these systems more vulnerable against selfish or malicious behaviors. Moreover, these improper usages cannot be faced only with data confidentiality, nodes authentication, non-repudiation, etc. In particular, structured P2P networks should follow the following secure routing primitives: (1) secure maintenance of routing tables, (2) secure routing of messages, and (3) secure identity assignment to nodes. But the first two problems depend in some way on the third one. If nodes’ identifiers can be chosen by users without any control, these networks can have security and operational problems. Therefore, like any other network or service, structured P2P networks require a robust access control to prevent potential attackers joining the network and a robust identity assignment system to guarantee their proper operation. In this thesis, firstly, we analyze the operation of the current structured P2P networks when managing identities in order to identify what security problems are related to the nodes’ identifiers within the overlay, and propose a series of requirements to be accomplished by any generated node ID to provide more security to a DHT-based structured P2P network. Secondly, we propose the use of implicit certificates to provide more security and to exploit the improvement in bandwidth, storage and performance that these certificates present compared to explicit certificates, design three protocols to assign nodes’ identifiers avoiding the identified problems, while maintaining user anonymity and allowing users’ traceability. Finally, we analyze the operation of the most used mechanisms to distribute revocation data in the Internet, with special focus on the proposed systems to work in P2P networks, and design a new mechanism to distribute revocation data more efficiently in a structured P2P network.Las redes P2P estructuradas fueron propuestas para solventar problemas de enrutamiento en infraestructuras de grandes dimensiones pero su nivel de seguridad lleva años siendo cuestionado por la comunidad investigadora. La mayor parte de los trabajos que intentan mejorar la seguridad de estas redes se han centrado en proporcionar encaminamiento seguro, sistemas de reputación, anonimato de los usuarios, etc. Sin embargo, la adecuada gestión de las identidades es un requisito sumamente importante para proporcionar los servicios mencionados anteriormente. La existencia de nodos anónimos y la falta de una autoridad centralizada capaz de monitorizar (y/o penalizar) a los nodos hace que estos sistemas sean más vulnerables que otros a comportamientos maliciosos por parte de los usuarios. Además, esos comportamientos inadecuados no pueden ser detectados proporcionando únicamente confidencialidad de los datos, autenticación de los nodos, no repudio, etc. Las redes P2P estructuradas deberían seguir las siguientes primitivas de enrutamiento seguro: (1) mantenimiento seguro de las tablas de enrutamiento, (2) enrutamiento seguro de los mensajes, and (3) asignación segura de las identidades. Pero la primera de los dos primitivas depende de alguna forma de la tercera. Si las identidades de los nodos pueden ser elegidas por sus usuarios sin ningún tipo de control, muy probablemente aparecerán muchos problemas de funcionamiento y seguridad. Por lo tanto, de la misma forma que otras redes y servicios, las redes P2P estructuradas requieren de un control de acceso robusto para prevenir la presencia de atacantes potenciales, y un sistema robusto de asignación de identidades para garantizar su adecuado funcionamiento. En esta tesis, primero de todo analizamos el funcionamiento de las redes P2P estructuradas basadas en el uso de DHTs (Tablas de Hash Distribuidas), cómo gestionan las identidades de sus nodos, identificamos qué problemas de seguridad están relacionados con la identificación de los nodos y proponemos una serie de requisitos para generar identificadores de forma segura. Más adelante proponemos el uso de certificados implícitos para proporcionar más seguridad y explotar las mejoras en consumo de ancho de banda, almacenamiento y rendimiento que proporcionan estos certificados en comparación con los certificados explícitos. También hemos diseñado tres protocolos de asignación segura de identidades, los cuales evitan la mayor parte de los problemas identificados mientras mantienen el anonimato de los usuarios y la trazabilidad. Finalmente hemos analizado el funcionamiento de la mayoría de los mecanismos utilizados para distribuir datos de revocación en Internet, con especial interés en los sistemas propuestos para operar en redes P2P, y hemos diseñado un nuevo mecanismo para distribuir datos de revocación de forma más eficiente en redes P2P estructuradas.Postprint (published version

Networking Middleware and Online-Deployment Mechanisms for Java-Based Games

Currently, web-based online gaming applications are predominately utilising Adobe Flash or Java Applets as their core technologies. These games are often casual, two-dimensional games and do not utilise the specialist graphics hardware which has proliferated across modern PCs and Consoles. Multi-user online game play in these titles is often either non-existent or extremely limited. Computer games applications which grace the current generation of consoles and personal computers are designed to utilise the increasingly impressive hardware power at their disposal. However, these are commonly distributed using a physical medium or deployed through custom, proprietary networking mechanisms and rely upon platform-specific networking APIs to facilitate multi-user online game play. In order to unify the concepts of these disparate styles of gaming, this paper presents two interconnected systems which are implemented using Java Web Start and JXTA P2P technologies, providing a platform-independent framework capable of deploying hardware accelerated cross-platform, cross-browser online-enabled Java games, as part of the Homura Project

Agent Extensions for Peer-to-Peer Networks.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have seen tremendous growth in development and usage in recent times. This attention has brought many developments as well as new challenges to these networks. We will show that agent extensions to P2P networks offer solutions to many problems faced by P2P networks. In this research, an attempt is made to bring together JXTA P2P infrastructure and Jinni, a Prolog based agent engine to form an agent based P2P network. On top of the JXTA, we define simple Java API providing P2P services for agent programming constructs. Jinni is deployed on this JXTA network using an automated code update mechanism. Experiments are conducted on this Jinni/JXTA platform to implement a simple agent communication and data exchange protocol

A policy-based security framework for ad-hoc networks

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