A SECURE ACTIVE NETWORK ENVIRONMENT ARCHITECTURE - REALIZATION IN SWITCHWARE

An active network is a network infrastructure which is programmable on a per-user or even per-packet basis. Increasing the flexibility of su ch network infrastructures invites new security risks. Coping with the se security risks represents the most fundamental contribution of acti ve network research.;The security concerns can be divided into those w hich affect the network as a whole and those which affect individual e lements. It is clear that the element problems must be solved first, s ince the integrity of network-level solutions will be based on trust i n the network elements. In this article we describe the architecture a nd implementation of a Secure Active Network Environment (SANE), which we believe provides a basis for implementing secure network-level sol utions. We guarantee that a node begins operation in a trusted state w ith the AEGIS secure bootstrap architecture. We guarantee that the sys tem remains in a trusted state by applying dynamic integrity checks in the network element's runtime system, using a novel naming system, an d applying node-to-node authentication when needed.