1st USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security
Pp. 19–24 of the Proceedings
Shame on Trust in Distributed Systems
Trent Jaeger, Patrick McDaniel, and Luke St. Clair, Pennsylvania State University; Ramón Cáceres and Reiner Sailer, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
Abstract
Approaches for building secure, distributed systems have fundamental limitations that prevent the construction of dynamic, Internet-scale systems. In this paper, we propose a concept of a shared reference monitor or Shamon that we believe will provide a basis for overcoming these limitations. First, distributed systems lack a principled basis for trust in the trusted computing bases of member machines. In most distributed systems, a trusted computing base is assumed. However, the fear of compromise due to misconfiguration or vulnerable software limits the cases where this assumption can be applied in practice. Where such trust is not assumed, current solutions are not scalable to large systems [7, 20]. Second, current systems do not ensure the enforcement of the flexible, distributed system security goals. Mandatory access control (MAC) policies aim to describe enforceable security goals, but flexible MAC solutions, such as SELinux, do not even provide a scalable solution for a single machine (due to the complexity of UNIX systems), much less a distributed system. A significant change in approach is necessary to develop a principled trusted computing base that enforces system security goals and scales to large distributed systems.
- View the full text of this paper in PDF.
Until July 2007, you will need your USENIX membership identification in order to access the full papers. The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2006 by the USENIX Association. All Rights Reserved. Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks within this paper.
- If you need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it from Adobe's site.
|
