Secure, customizable, many-to-one communication

Concast is a customizable many-to-one network-layer communication service. Although programmable services like concast can improve the efficiency of group applications, accompanying security concerns must be addressed before they are likely to be deployed. The problem of securing such services is interesting because conventional end-to-end security mechanisms are not applicable when messages are processed inside the network, and also because of the potential for interaction among the various policies involved. In this paper we describe our implementation of a secure concast service, which leverages existing network-level security mechanisms (IPsec) to provide secure distribution of program code (merge specifications) as well as authentication of participating nodes. We describe the various policies supported, how they interact, and how our approach provides security against various attacks.