Secure Inter-Process Communication

Authors

  • Valentin Radulescu The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Keywords:

inter-process communication, Enea LINX, distributed system, process authentication, confidentiality

Abstract

This article reveals the necessity in modern distributed systems for authentication of a process running in a distributed system and to provide a secure channel for inter-process communication in which both the client authenticates to the server and the server authenticates to the client. The distributed system is a client-server system based on ENEA LINX inter-process communication framework. Enea LINX is a Linux open source project which allows processes to exchange information between several media channels: shared memory (local process communication), Ethernet (local network inter process communication), TCP/IP (inter process communication through Internet) in which nodes are communicating regardless of the underlying media. Because ENEA LINX offers no security mechanism it appears the need for securing the communicating over LINX protocol. Process authentication disables the need for personal authentication of the user and also prevents an attacker from starting a process which will harm the entire system. Besides authentication, using public key combined with symmetric key technologies the secure inter-process communication system must provide integrity and confidentiality.

Author Biography

Valentin Radulescu, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

IT&C Security Master

Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics

References

A. S. Tanenbaum, M. van Steen, Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, Prentice Hall, 2006

Sven Goldt, The Linux Programmer's Guide, 1995, Availabe: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lpg/node1.html

M. Mitchell, J. Oldham, A. Samuel, Advanced Linux Programming, New Riders Publishing, 2001

Enea Software AB, LINX for Linux User's Guide, online, Available: http://linx.sourceforge.net/linxdoc/doc/usersguide/UsersGuide_LINX_for_Linux.html

A. Menezes, P. van Oorschot, and S. Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography, CRC Press, 1965

Hussain M.J. Almohri, Danfeng (Daphne) Yao, Dennis Kafura, Process Authentication for High System Assurance,

E. Hopper, Why CORA and other forms of RPC are bad, online, http://www.omnifarious.org/~hopper/corbabad.html

LINX project, online, Available: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linx/

Downloads

Published

2013-12-30

How to Cite

Radulescu, V. (2013). Secure Inter-Process Communication. Journal of Mobile, Embedded and Distributed Systems, 5(4), 154-161. Retrieved from http://jmeds.eu/index.php/jmeds/article/view/Secure_Inter_Process_Communication

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 4 (2013): Security for Mobile technologies

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:


    1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

    1. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

    1. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

    1. The author(s) is responsible for the correctness and legality of the paper content.

    1. Papers that are copyrighted or published will not be taken into consideration for publication in JMEDS It is the author(s) responsibility to ensure that the paper does not cause any copyright infringements and other problems.

    1. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain all necessary copyright release permissions for the use of any copyrighted materials in the paper prior to the submission.

  1. The Author(s) retains the right to reuse any portion of the paper, in future works, including books, lectures and presentations in all media, with the condition that the publication by JMEDS is properly credited and referenced.
Creative Commons License
JMEDS articles by Journal of Mobile, Embedded and Distributed Systems (JMEDS) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://jmeds.eu.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://jmeds.eu/index.php/jmeds/about/submissions#copyrightNotice.