SeCol: Security for Collaborative Applications using Group Communication and Publish/Subscribe Systems
Large scale collaborative applications are characterized by a large number of users and other processing end entities that are distributed over geographically disparate locations. Therefore, these applications need a message-oriented middleware that scales to the application needs and enables users to process messages without concern for message transmission and delivery. Such a middleware is typically provided by a network of servers responsible for message transmission and delivery. Large-scale distributed systems such as Group Communication Systems (GCSs) and Publish/Subscribe (Pub/Sub) enable military and commercial collaborative applications in which users and other end-entities process data and messages without concern for message transmission and delivery. However, their widespread use is hindered by the need for scalable security services; viz., services for confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and availability. Current solutions for providing security for these systems use trusted servers, which consequently bear significant trust liabilities of maintaining confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of messages and keys that are processes by the servers.

Communication networks on the Internet are attacked daily by increasingly sophisticated adversaries as indicated by recent electronic crime statistics. Examples of systems compromised in the recent past include those managed by leading supercomputing centers in the United States. If adversaries compromise the servers providing security services, they would be able to access and modify messages protected by the servers. New approaches based on suitable cryptographic techniques (e.g., proxy encryption) are needed that retain the efficiency and scalability of existing system designs and yet minimize the trust liability in the servers. These approaches would lead to the development and integration of security protocols with distributed system infrastructures that support secure collaborative applications and comprise servers that bear minimal trust liabilities. The integrated technologies provide a means for effective testing and transfer. In this research program we will develop, integrate and test new security protocols and tools for large collaborative applications that minimize trust liabilities in servers supporting these applications.
 
Project Leads
Himanshu Khurana, NCSA

Return to Projects list


SeCol to receiving funding under the ONR NCASSR Program for Sep’05 – Aug’06
SeCol: Security for Collaborative Applications using Group Communication and Publish/Subscribe Systems


The National Center for Advanced Secure Systems Research NCASSR) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a multi-institutional cybersecurity research team. NCASSR focuses basic and applied research necessary to develop next generation information security technologies that address national cybersecurity needs. NCASSR is led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).


SELS 0.7 released
Secure Email List Services (SELS) is an open source software for creating and developing secure email list services among user communities.
 
Strong community engagement strengthens cybersecurity research and development
NCASSR-supported exploratory research at NCSA and elsewhere has sparked additional external funding and development opportunities as well as successful deployment and adoption by users ranging from the defense sector to state law enforcement to the utilities industry.
 
NCASSR Collaborator Goes To Washington
Carl Gunter, a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science and a project lead on NCASSR-supported work involving adaptive, secure messaging, recently spoke to an audience of congressional staffers and lobbyists on Capitol Hill regarding ways to address a variety of critical cybersecurity issues in areas such as healthcare and energy distribution.