Simple Security in Distributed Systems: an Introduction

22.10.2007

Foredragsholdere
Maarten van Steen

Date: Monday, October 22nd 2007, at 12:15
Place: Lille Aud, Realfagsbygget, UiT
Title: " Simple Security in Distributed Systems: an Introduction "
Lecturer: Professor Maarten van Steen, Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract:
This lecture aims to achieve two goals: give a brief introduction into some of the basic principles of security in distributed systems, and (2) show how decent behavior may be enforced in wireless distributed systems.

The first part of the lecture will mainly cover the material as discussed in Chapter 9 of "Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms," leaving out all the more advanced material. An emphasis is put on basic authentication, message integrity, and key management. This material is needed for the second part of the lecture in which we take the perspective that die-hard security measures may be too expensive or too complex, forcing us to look at alternatives. In particular, I will discuss the example of a gossip-based wireless system in which corrupt nodes are forced to behave well or they may otherwise be excluded from further participation. The result is that overall data integrity is improved, but may not be perfect. I argue that in many cases, near-perfectness may be good enough.

The lecture is primarily intended for students, but certainly the second part may also be of interest to a broader audience. I make no assumptions regarding prerequisite knowledge about security.

Bio:
Maarten van Steen is a professor at the VU University Amsterdam, where he leads a group on large-scale distributed systems. He has been looking at automated replication of Web content for several years now, and more recently has been moving towards highly decentralized systems, including peer-to-peer systems and very large wireless ad hoc (sensor) networks. Together with Andrew Tanenbaum, he is co-author of the text book "Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms."


If you have question regarding the guest lecture, please contact professor Dag Johansen.

Welcome!