Research on Security Management in Active Network Node Operating Systems

Abstract

This paper analyzes the security requirements and problems with which active nodes are confronted, and proposes a general security management subsystem in Active Network NodeOS. The subsystem implements through four functions: resource management, hop-by-hop authentication, credential management and security policy management. Resource management avoids excessive use of resources by constraining the maximum available resource quantity of each application. Hop-by-hop authentication is realized by adding hop-by-hop integrity option to ANEP header, which accomplishes the previous hop authentication and the hop-by-hop integrity checking. The function of credential management is to obtain the credential, authenticate the validity of the credential, and make origin authentication and end-to-end integrity checking by using the principal’s public key carried in the credential. Security policy management is realized by embedding a reformed KeyNote Trust Management system into NodeOS kernel to complete access control to node resource.