A secure method for transferring active packet using digital signature schemes

摘要

Active networks represent a new approach to network architecture. Active networks provide a much more flexible network infrastructure than traditional networks do. Flexibility is a powerful merit of active networks, but it can raise considerable security problems. Current active network researches have applied diverse techniques to solve them. Cryptographic technique is one way of protecting active networks. However it should not be applied conventionally, since active network paradigm is different from traditional one. It means that, at active network environments, active packets contain programmable codes should perform computations on intermediate-nodes as well as end-nodes. That is, since the packet sending-node does not know intermediate receiving-node, it cannot apply traditional cryptographic techniques can process each other only between end-nodes. This paper proposes a secure method for transferring active packets and performing computations using a transformed digital signature schemes with message recovery, at active network environment that intermediate packet receiving-nodes are not fixed. The proposed scheme uses transformed public key digital signature scheme that signing/verifying key pairs have almost same bit length and the verification-key storing server plays the role of key management server.