A dynamic and flexible Access Control and Resource Monitoring Mechanism for Active Nodes
Adam Hess, Marcus Schöller, Günter Schäfer, Martina Zitterbart, Adam Wolisz · 2002
Active and programmable networks are new paradigms in computer networking. Network nodes have the ability to load and execute special purpose programs called service modules (audio transcoder, traffic screening agent, etc.). The service modules are either stored on the node itself or dynamically downloaded from a service module repository and installed on the network node. These modules are designed and implemented by the provider or by a third party and as it is theoretically impossible to construct a generic algorithm to determine what a program does, the introduction of a quantitative access control mechanism seems to be a promising approach. Therefore, the standard security mechanisms of an operating system must be enhanced. This paper presents a generic mechanism to administratively limit the resources granted to service modules. The discussed technique is independent of the programming languages in which the services are implemented. The presented results, achieved with a first prototype developed for the active networking platform AMnet [4] (Active Multicast Network) are very promising.