DisCo: A Distribution Infrastructure for Securely Deploying Decomposable Services in Partly Trusted Environments

Abstract

The growing popularity of network-based services and peer-to-peer networks has resulted in situations where components of a distributed application often need to execute in environments that are only partly trusted by the application's owner.Such deployment into partial or unstable trust environments exacerbates the classical problems of distributing decomposable services: authentication and access control, trust management, secure communication, code distribution and installation, and process rights management. Unfortunately, the application developer's burden of coping with these latter issues often dominates the benefits of service distribution.The DisCo infrastructure is specifically targeted to the development of systems and services deployed into coalition environments: networks of users and hosts administered by multiple authorities with changing trust relationships.The DisCo infrastructure provides application-neutral support for the classical problems of distributed services, thereby relieving the developer of the burden of independently managing these features. DisCo also includes support for continuously monitoring established connections, enabling corrective action from an application to cope with changing trust relationships.Our experience with building a secure video distribution service using the DisCo toolkit indicates that the latter permits distributed secure deployment into a partly trusted environment with minimal application developer effort, affording the advantages of natural expression and convenient deployment without compromising on efficiency.

Common Representation of Information Flows for Dynamic Coalitions

“…Freudenthal et al [10] have attempted to address some of the drawbacks of the RBACs in distributed environments through Distributed Role-Based Access Controls (dRBAC) as part of a larger project on Distributed Coalition Infrastructure [11]. While dRBAC is a significant step in terms of ensuring a degree of trust and distributing the responsibility for creation of roles, this approach relies on creating new roles for participants and is still prone to privilege accumulation.…”

DRBAC: Distributed Role-Based Access Control for Dynamic Coalition Environments

“…dRBAC is being developed as a trust management component of a larger system called the Distributed Coalitions Infrastructure (DisCo) [9] that presents a simple unified interface for trust-monitored distributed application deployment. We have implemented a centralized dRBAC system that responds to trust-relationship queries generated by our DisCo infrastructure.…”

“…dRBAC is one component of a larger architecture called the Distributed Coalitions Infrastructure (DisCo) [9]. DisCo presents a simple, unified interface for distributed application deployment in environments that contain systems and services administered by multiple authorities with changing trust relationships.…”

“…DisCo also includes a novel abstraction called the Switchboard, which provides applications with the ability to create credentialed, secure connections with the same programming effort as might be required in a completely secure environment. The overall DisCo architecture and the Switchboard abstraction are described in additional detail elsewhere [9,10].…”