Paper collections on performance of TLS (and some other security protocols in general)

  1. D. Boneh, Hovav Shacham, and Eric Rescrola. Client side caching for TLS.
    In proceedings of the Internet Society's 2002 Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS), pp. 195--202.
    Full paper: PDF.
  2. D. Boneh, and H. Shacham. Improving SSL Handshake Performance via Batching.
    In proceedings RSA'2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2020, Springer-Verlag, pp. 28--43, 2001.
    Full paper: PostScript.
  3. Modadugu, N. and Eric Rescorla, The Design and Implementation of Datagram TLS, Proceedings of NDSS 2004, February 2004. (PDF).
  4. Rescorla, E., Cain, A., Korver, B., SSLACC: A Clustered SSL Accelerator, Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Security Conference, August 2002. (PDF).
  5. Eun-Ae Cho, Young-Gab Kim, Chang-Joo Moon, Doo-Kwon Baik, Design and Implementation of an SSL Component Based on CBD,
    Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 3398, Jan 2005, Pages 478 - 486. NCA 2004.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract:

    •  SSL is one of the most popular protocols used on the Internet for secure communications. However SSL protocol has several problems. First, SSL protocol brings considerable burden to the CPU utilization so that performance and speed of the security service is lowered during encryption transaction. Second, SSL protocol can be vulnerable for cryptanalysis due to the fixed algorithm being used. Third, it causes a problem of mutual interaction with other protocols because of the encryption export restriction policy of the U.S. Fourth, it is difficult for developers to learn and use cryptography API for SSL. To solve these problems, in this paper, we propose an SSL component based on CBD. The execution of the SSL component is supported by Confidentiality and Integrity component. It can encrypt data selectively and use various mechanisms such as SEED and HAS-160. Also, it can complement the SSL protocols problems and, at the same time, take advantage of component. Finally, in the performance analysis, we present a better result than the SSL protocol as the data size is increased.
  6. George Apostolopoulos, Vinod G. J. Peris, Debanjan Saha: Transport Layer Security: How Much Does It Really Cost?
    INFOCOM 1999: 717-725.
    Full paper: PDF
  7. George Apostolopoulos, David Aubespin, Vinod Peris, Prashant Pradhan, Debanjan Saha: Design, Implementation and Performance of a Content-Based Switch,
    INFOCOM 2000,
    Full paper: PDF
  8. George Apostolopoulos, Vinod Peris, Prashant Pradhan, Debanjan Saha, Securing Electronic Commerce: Reducing the SSL Overhead,
    IEEE Network, 14, 4 (July), 8-16, 2000.
    Full paper: PDF
  9. Adam Stubblefield, Aviel D. Rubin, and Dan S. Wallach: Managing the Performance Impact of Web Security,
    Electronic Commerce Research, Volume 5, Number 1, January 2005, pp. 99-116(18).
    Full paper: PDF
  10. Cristian Coarfa, Peter Druschel, Dan S. Wallach, Performance Analysis of TLS Web Servers,
    ISOC NDSS (San Diego, California), February 2002.
    Full paper: PDF
  11. Cristian Coarfa, Peter Druschel and Dan S. Wallach. Performance Analysis of TLS Web Servers.
    To be published in ACM Transactions on Computer Systems.
    Full paper: PDF
  12. Xiaodong Lin, Johnny W. Wong, Weidong Kou, Performance Analysis of Secure Web Server Based on SSL,
    Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 1975, Jan 2000, Page 249, ISW 2000.
    Full paper: PDF
  13. Claude Castelluccia, Einar Mykletun, Gene Tsudik, Improving Secure Server Performance by Re-balancing SSL/TLS Handshakes,
    Cryptology ePrint Archive No. 2005/037
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Much of today's distributed computing takes place in a client/server model. Despite advances in fault tolerance -- in particular, replication and load distribution -- server overload remains to be a major problem. In the Web context, one of the main overload factors is the direct consequence of expensive Public Key operations performed by servers as part of each SSL handshake. Since most SSL-enabled servers use RSA, the burden of performing many costly decryption operations can be very detrimental to server performance. This paper examines a promising technique for re-balancing RSA-based client/server handshakes. This technique facilitates more favorable load distribution by requiring clients to perform more work (as part of encryption) and servers to perform commensurately less work, thus resulting in better SSL throughput. Proposed techniques are based on careful adaptation of variants of Server-Aided RSA originally constructed by Matsumoto, et al. [1]. Experimental results demonstrate that suggested methods (termed Client-Aided RSA) can speed up processing by a factor of between 11 to 19, depending on the RSA key size. This represents a considerable improvement. Furthermore, proposed techniques can be a useful companion tool for SSL Client Puzzles in defense against DoS and DDoS attacks.

  14. Santosh Bag, Performance Impact of Security Protocols,
    Bachelor Thesis, IIT Bombay.
    Full paper: PostScript

    • Abstract: Never before was the so much concern for e-security as in this age of pervasive internet. Particularly with businesses and transactions going online there has been much, but valid hoopla about the reliability and safety of such online dealings. Numerous security measures cropped up to achieve safety. Many security protocols have been designed for the various layers of the network stack, each specializing and effectively protecting the service provided by that layer. Cryptography is an essential component in these protocols but is also notorious for hogging CPU time, which takes a toll on the service which it intends to protect. There are also other factors which inhibit the performance, forcing security engineers to take a performance perspective of these protocols to achieve a balance between safety and performance. This report specially looks at the two protocols TLS and IPsec and their structure to dig out their limiting factors and analyze their performance.

  15. Varsha Mainkar (AT&T Labs), Performance Implications of Security Protocols
    Presentation at the 5th INFORMS Telecom Conference, March 2000
    Full presentation: PDF

  16. Peter Gutmann, Performance Characteristics of Application-level Security Protocols,
    work in progress.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Comparisons of the most popular application-level security protocols, PGP and S/MIME for independent message protection and SSH and SSL/TLS for communications session protection, are usually made at the political rather than the technical level. This paper provides a detailed breakdown and analysis of the performance characteristics of the different protocols, identifying potential performance problem areas and providing guidance for protocol designers and implementers.

  17. AbdelNasir Alshamsi and Takamichi Saito, A Technical Comparison of IPSec and SSL,
    AINA 2005.
    Full paper: PDF ePrint Archive 2004/314

    • Abstract: IPsec (IP Security) and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) have been the most robust and most potential tools available for securing communications over the Internet. Both IPsec and SSL have advantages and shortcomngs. Yet no paper has been found comparing the two protocols in terms of charateristics and functionality. Our objective is to present an analysis of security and performance properties for IPsec and SSL.

  18. Yijun Zeng and Omar Cherkaoui (University of Quebec), Performance Study of COPS over TLS and IPsec Secure Session,
    DSOM 2002, LNCS 2506.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract. This paper evaluates the performance of COPS over secure TLS and IPsec connections. For large size data, when we apply authentication and encryption, the throughput degrades compared with the throughput without authentication or encryption. COPS has native security mechanisms, but it also has limitations. As defined in RFC 2478, COPS includes no standard key management and no data privacy hop-by-hop security. To be deployed, it needs to support access control models. Based on our comparison of the performance of the implementation of COPS, COPS over TLS and COPS over IPsec, we propose a strategic approach to secure COPS.

  19. Michael Steiner, Peter Buhler, Thomas Eirich and Michael Waidner, Secure password-based cipher suite for TLS,
    ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), 4(2): 134-157, 2001
    Full paper: PDF

  20. Dirk Balfanz, Glenn Durfee, Narendar Shankar, Diana Smetters, Jessica Staddon, Hao-Chi Wong, Secret Handshakes from Pairing-Based Key Agreements,
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP'03).
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Consider a CIA agent who wants to authenticate herself to a server, but does not want to reveal her CIA credentials unless the server is a genuine CIA outlet. Consider also that the CIA server does not want to reveal its CIA credentials to anyone but CIA agents – not even to other CIA servers.
      In this paper we first show how pairing-based cryptography can be used to implement such secret handshakes. We then propose a formal definition for secure secret handshakes, and prove that our pairing-based schemes are secure under the Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption. Our protocols support role-based group membership authentication, traceability, indistinguishability to eavesdroppers, unbounded collusion resistance, and forward repudiability.
      Our secret-handshake scheme can be implemented as a TLS cipher suite. We report on the performance of our preliminary Java implementation.

  21. Patroklos G. Argyroudis, Raja Verma, Hitesh Tewari and Donal O’Mahony: Performance Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols on Handheld Devices,
    NCA 2004.
    Full paper: PDF

  22. Avesh K. Agarwal  and Wenye Wang: Measuring Performance Impact of Security Protocols in Wireless Local Area Networks,
    International Conference on Broadband Networks -- Broadband Wireless Networking Symposium 2005.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: In this paper, we study and quantify the impact of the most widely used security protocols, such as 802.1x, EAP, IPSEC, SSL and RADIUS, in wireless local area networks (WLANs). Based on the measurements in a wireless network testbed, we present quantitative, realistic findings with regards to both security functions as well as network performance. First, we describe experimental setup including system configuration and protocol stack. Then, we consider a variety of individual and hybrid security policies in order to capture the impact of security services at different network layers. Moreover, depending upon mobile nodes’ current location, user mobility is categorized into non-roaming and roaming scenarios. In addition, we define several performance metrics such as authentication delay, authentication messages, response time, throughput to measure the overhead associated with security policies on system performance. Comprehensive experimental measurements and analysis are provided for TCP/UDP traffic streams and network variations to demonstrate the impact of security protocols in wireless local area networks.

  23. Albert Levi, Erkay Savas, Performance Evaluation of Public-Key Cryptosystem Operations in WTLS Protocol,
    ISCC 2003.
    Full paper: PDF

  1. L. C. Paulson. Inductive analysis of the Internet protocol TLS.
    ACM Transactions on Computer and System Security
    2 3 (1999), 332–351.
    Full paper: PDF

  2. N. Ferguson and B. Schneier, A Cryptographic Evaluation of IPsec,
    Unpublished manuscript, 1999.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: We perform a cryptographic review of the IPsec protocol, as described in the November 1998 RFCs. Even though the protocol is a disappointment--our primary complaint is with its complexity--it is the best IP security protocol available at the moment. 

  3. O. Elkeelany, M. M. Matalgah, K. P. Sheikh, M. Thaker, G. Chaudhry, D. Medhi and J. Qaddour: Performance analysis of IPSec protocol: Encryption and authentication,
    ICC 2002 - IEEE International Conference on Communications
    , vol. 25, no. 1, April 2002, pp. 1164 - 1168
    Full paper: (unavailable)

  4. S. Miltchev, S. Ioannidis, A. Keromytis, A Study of the Relative Costs of Network Security Protocols,
    USENIX  2002 Freenix Track.
    Full paper: PostScript

    • Abstract: While the benefits of using IPsec to solve a significant number of network security problems are well-known and its adoption is gaining ground, very little is known about the communication overhead that it introduces. Quantifying this overhead will make users aware of the price of the added security, and will assist them in making well-informed IPsec deployment decisions.
      In this paper, we investigate the performance of IPsec using micro- and macro-benchmarkings. Our tests explore how the various modes of operation and encryption algorithms affect its performance and the benefits of using cryptographic hardware to accelerate IPsec processing. Finally, we compare against other secure data transfer mechanisms, such as SSL, scp(1) and sftp(1).

  5. George Hadjichristofi, Nathaniel Davis, IV and Scott Midkiff, IPSec Overhead in Wireline and Wireless Networks for Web and Email Applications,
    IEEE IPCCC 2003.
    Full paper: PDF

  6. Nobuo Okabe, Shoichi Sakane et al: A Study of Security Architecture for Control Networks over IP,
    INSS 2004.
    Full paper: PDF

  7. Heng Yin, Haining Wang, Building an Application-aware IPsec Policy System,
    USENIX 2005,
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: As a security mechanism at the network-layer, the IP security protocol (IPsec) has been available for years, but its usage is limited to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). The end-to-end security services provided by IPsec have not been widely used. To bring the IPsec services into wide usage, a standard IPsec API is a potential solution. However, the realization of a user-friendly IPsec API involves many modifications on the current IPsec and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) implementations. An alternative approach is to configure application-specific IPsec policies, but the current IPsec policy system lacks the knowledge of the context of applications running at upper layers, making it infeasible to configure applicationspecific policies in practice.
      In this paper, we propose an application-aware IPsec policy system on the existing IPsec/IKE infrastructure, in which a socket monitor running in the application context reports the socket activities to the application policy engine. In turn, the engine translates the application policies into the underlying security policies, and then writes them into the IPsec Security Policy Database (SPD) via the existing IPsec policy management interface. We implement a prototype in Linux (Kernel 2.6) and evaluate it in our testbed. The experimental results show that the overhead of policy translation is insignificant, and the overall system performance of the enhanced IPsec is comparable to those of security mechanisms at upper layers. Configured with the application-aware IPsec policies, both secured applications at upper layers and legacy applications can transparently obtain IP security enhancements.

  8. Jin-Cherng Lin , Ching-Tien Chang and Wei-Tao Chung, Design, Implementation and Performance Evaluation of IP-VPN,
    AINA 2003.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Network security has always been a significant issue, but a recognized priority today due to the popular of internet. The issue is not if security should be implemented on a network; rather, the question to ask is if security has been implemented properly and the interoperability with today’s network architecture. Although there are various ways to perform a secure network environment, but the most popular and the most progressive network security mechanism is Security Architecture for IP (IPSec), offered by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). In this paper, we will discuss the problems when combine IPSec into current TCP/IP module by porting an IPSec shareware (FreeS/WAN) into a router. Finally, in order to understand the impact on router’s performance when using various services and hash/encryption algorithms provided by IPSec, we testing the throughput of the router before and after applying IPSec.

  9. Jirka Klaue, and Andreas Hess, On the Impact of IPsec on Interactive Communications,
    IPDPS 2005.
    Full paper:
    PDF

  10. John Ronan, Steven Davy, Paul Malone, Micheal O Foghlu, Performance Implications of IPsec Deployment,
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) use the Internet or other data network service as a backbone to provide a secure
      connection across a potentially hostile WAN. Such security guarantees provide the motivation for VPN deployment. This security does, however, come at a performance cost brought about by the increased processing overhead. This paper presents an investigation into these overheads. In particular, this investigation will consider different user resource availability in addition to router type and encryption algorithms.

  11. Stephen Kent, Charles Lynn, and Karen Seo, Secure Border Gateway Protocol (S-BGP),
    JSAC 2000.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract—The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which is used to distribute routing information between autonomous systems (ASes), is a critical component of the Internet's routing infrastructure. It is highly vulnerable to a variety of malicious attacks, due to the lack of a secure means of verifying the authenticity and legitimacy of BGP control traffic. This paper describes a secure, scalable, deployable architecture (S-BGP) for an authorization and authentication system that addresses most of the security problems associated with BGP. The paper discusses the vulnerabilities
      and security requirements associated with BGP, describes the S-BGP countermeasures, and explains how they address these vulnerabilities and requirements. In addition, this paper provides a comparison of this architecture to other approaches that have been proposed, analyzes the performance implications of the proposed countermeasures, and addresses operational issues.

  12. D. Boneh, and M. Franklin. Efficient generation of shared RSA keys.
    Journal of the ACM (JACM), Vol. 48, Issue 4, pp. 702--722, July 2001. Extended abstract in Proceedings Crypto' 97, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1233, Springer-Verlag, pp. 425--439, 1997.
    Full paper: PostScript.
  13. Gene Tsudik and Shouhuai Xu, A Flexible Framework for Secret Handshakes,
    Cryptology ePrint Archive. 2005/034
    Full paper: PDF
  14. Ran Canetti and Hugo Krawczyk, Analysis of Key-Exchange Protocols and Their Use for Building Secure Channels,
    Cryptology ePrint Archive 2001/040
    Full paper: PostScript

    • Abstract: We present a formalism for the analysis of key-exchange protocols that combines previous definitional approaches and results in a definition of security that enjoys some important analytical benefits: (i) any key-exchange protocol that satisfies the security definition can be composed with symmetric encryption and authentication functions to provide provably secure communication channels; and (ii) the definition allows for simple modular proofs of security: one can design and prove security of key-exchange protocols in an idealized model where the communication links are perfectly authenticated, and then translate them using general tools to obtain security in the realistic setting of adversary-controlled links. We exemplify the usability of our results by applying them to obtain the proof of two main classes of key-exchange protocols, Diffie-Hellman and key-transport, authenticated via symmetric or asymmetric techniques.
      Further contributions of the paper include the formalization of "secure channels'' in the context of key-exchange protocols, and establishing sufficient conditions on the symmetric encryption and authentication functions to realize these channels.

  15. Y. Amir, Y. Kim, C. Nita-Rotaru and G. Tsudik, On the Performance of Group Key Agreement Protocols,
    ACM Transactions on Information Systems Security, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 457-488, August 2004.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Group key agreement is a fundamental building block for secure peer group communication systems. Several group key management techniques were proposed in the last decade, all assuming the existence of an underlying group communication infrastructure to provide reliable and ordered message delivery as well as group membership information. Despite analysis, implementation, and deployment of some of these techniques, the actual costs associated with group key management have been poorly understood so far. This resulted in an undesirable tendency: on the one hand, adopting suboptimal security for reliable group communication, while, on the other hand, constructing excessively costly group key management protocols.
      This paper presents a thorough performance evaluation of five notable distributed key management techniques (for collaborative peer groups) integrated with a reliable group communication system. An in-depth comparison and analysis of the five techniques is presented based on experimental results obtained in actual local- and wide-area networks. The extensive performance measurement experiments conducted for all methods offer insights into their scalability and practicality. Furthermore, our analysis of the experimental results highlights several observations that are not obvious from the theoretical analysis.

  16. Y. Amir, Y. Kim, C. Nita-Rotaru, and G. Tsudik, On the Performance of Group Key Agreement Protocols.
    IEEE ICDCS'2002, July 2002.
    Full paper: PDF

  17. Yuh-Min Tseng, Efficient authenticated key agreement protocols resistant to a denial-of-service attack.
    Int. J. Netw. Manag. 15, 3 (May. 2005), 193-202.
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Malicious intruders may launch as many invalid requests as possible without establishing a server connection to bring server service to a standstill. This is called a denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed DoS (DDoS) attack. Until now, there has been no complete solution to resisting a DoS/DDoS attack. Therefore, it is an important network security issue to reduce the impact of a DoS/DDoS attack. A resource-exhaustion attack on a server is one kind of denial-of-service attack. In this article we address the resource-exhaustion problem in authentication and key agreement protocols. The resource-exhaustion attack consists of both the CPU-exhaustion attack and the storage-exhaustion attack. In 2001, Hirose and Matsuura proposed an authenticated key agreement protocol (AKAP) that was the first protocol simultaneously resistant to both the CPU-exhaustion attack and the storage-exhaustion attack. However, their protocol is time-consuming for legal users in order to withstand the DoS attack. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a slight modification to the Hirose-Matsuura protocol to reduce the computation cost. Both the Hirose-Matsuura and the modified protocols provide implicit key confirmation. Also, we propose another authenticated key agreement protocol with explicit key confirmation. The new protocol requires less computation cost. Because DoS/DDoS attacks come in a variety of forms, the proposed protocols cannot fully disallow a DoS/DDoS attack. However, they reduce the effect of such an attack and thus make it more difficult for the attack to succeed.

  18. John Canny, Stephen Sorkin, Practical Large-Scale Distributed Key Generation,
    Eurocrypt 2004
    Full paper: PDF

  19. Burkhard Springer and Liam Kihmartin, Performance Evaluation of the Internet Key Exchange Protocol under Dynamic VoIP Network Conditions,
    ISSC 2003, Limerick.
    Full paper: PDF

  20. M. Bellare, J. Garay, R. Hauser, A. Herzberg, H. Krawczyk, M. Steiner, G. Tsudik, E. Van Herreweghen, and M. Waidner: Design, Implementation and Deployment of a Secure Account-Based Electronic Payment System.
    IEEE JSAC, special issue on Secure Communication, May 2000.
    Full paper:
    PDF

  21. C. Castelluccia, S. Jarecki and G. Tsudik: Secret Handshakes from CA-oblivious Encryption,
    Proc. IACR AsiaCrypt'04. December 2004.
    Full paper:
    PDF

  22. N. Saxena, G. Tsudik and J. Yi: Admission Control in Peer-to-Peer: Design and Performance Evaluation,
    ACM Workshop on Security of Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks (SASN '03), November 2003.
    Full paper: PDF

  23. Alan Harbitter, and Daniel A Menascé. 2002. A methodology for analyzing the performance of authentication protocols.
    ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. Secur.
    5, 4 (Nov. 2002), 458-491.
    Full paper: PDF

  24. Alan Harbitter, Daniel A. Menascé: Performance of Public-Key-Enabled Kerberos Authentication in Large Networks.
    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2001: 170-183
    Full: Paper: PDF

  25. Alan Harbitter, and Menascé, D. A. 2001. The performance of public key-enabled kerberos authentication in mobile computing applications.
    In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (Philadelphia, PA, USA, Nov 2001. pp. 78-85.
    Full paper: PDF

  26. Jongkyung Kim, Hyuncheol Kim, Seong-Jin Ahn, Jin-Wook Chung: The Authentication and Processing Performance of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Based Multi-party Secure Closed Conference System.
    ISPA 2004: 725-729 LNCS 3358
    Full paper: PDF

  27. Georgios Kambourakis, Angelos Rouskas, Dimitris Gritzalis: Performance Evaluation of Certificate Based Authentication in Integrated Emerging 3G and Wi-Fi Networks.
    EuroPKI 2004: 287-296 LNCS 3093
    Full paper: PDF

  1. Thomas Y. C. Woo, Simon S. Lam: A Framework for Distributed Authorization.
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security 1993: 112-118
    Full paper: PDF

  2. Jon Howell, David Kotz: End-to-End Authorization.
    OSDI 2000: 151-164
    Full paper: PDF

  3. Thomas Ziebermayr, Stefan Probst: Web Service Authorization Framework.
    ICWS 2004: 614-621
    Full paper: PDF

  4. Sarath Indrakanti, Vijay Varadharajan, Michael Hitchens: Authorization Service for Web Services and its Implementation.
    ICWS 2004: 774-777
    Full paper: PDF

  5. Jeff Hayes: Policy-based Authentication and Authorization: Secure Access to the Network Infrastructure.
    IEEE ACSAC 2000: 328-333
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: A gaping hole in many of today's networks is the weak security surrounding the network devices themselves-the routers, the switches and the access servers. In all public networks and in some private networks, the network devices are shared virtually among different user communities. Access to the configuration schemes and command lines is most often an “all or nothing” proposition-the network administrator gets either read-only privileges or read/write privileges. In this case, authentication equals authorization. Herein lies the problem. Security policies may mandate that certain administrators have read-only capabilities for all device parameters and read/write capabilities for a certain subset of commands. Each administrator may have a unique access profile. Authentication verifies identity; authorization verifies privileges. This paper addresses the value of using a centralized, provisioned management structure that disseminates network policies and administration privileges to all the devices that make up the network infrastructure

  6. Ramaswamy Chandramouli: A Policy Validation Framework for Enterprise Authorization Specification.
    IEEE ACSAC 2003: 319-329
    Full paper: PDF

  7. Sanjay Raman, Dwaine E. Clarke, Matt Burnside, Srinivas Devadas, Ronald L. Rivest: Access-Controlled Resource Discovery for Pervasive Networks. SAC 2003: 338-345
    Full paper: PDF

  8. Antonio Corradi, Rebecca Montanari, Daniela Tibaldi: Context-Based Access Control Management in Ubiquitous Environments.
    NCA 2004: 253-260
    Full paper: PDF

    • Abstract: Wireless connectivity and the widespread diffusion of portable devices raise new challenges for ubiquitous service provisioning. Mobility of users causes frequent and unpredictable changes in user location and in consequently available resources. Access control to resources is crucial to leverage the provision of ubiquitous services and calls for novel solutions based on various context information, e.g., user location, device properties, user needs, local resource visibility. This work presents a novel access control model that proposes the adoption of context as a first-class design principle to rule access to resources. The paper proposes a context-centric access control middleware, called UbiCOSM, that dynamically determines the contexts of mobile users and effectively rules the access to them, by taking into account different types of metadata: user profiles and system/user-level authorization policies. The paper also presents a context-dependent movie-info service to evaluate the functioning of UbiCOSM.

  9. Damian G. Cholewka, Reinhardt A. Botha, Jan H. P. Eloff: A Context-Sensitive Access Control Model and Prototype Implementation.
    IFIP SEC 2000: 341-350
    Full paper: PDF

  10.