Active Security Support for Active Networks

Active networks aim to provide a software frameworkthat enables network applications to customize theprocessing of their communication packets. Security is of criticalimportance to the success of active networking. This paperpresents a design and a description of the implementation forsecuring the node of an active network using active networkingprinciples. The secure node architecture includes an active nodeoperating system security API, an active security guardian, andquality of protection (QoP) provisions. The architecture supportshighly customized and situational policies created by users andapplications dynamically. It permits active nodes to satisfy the application-specific dynamic security and protection requirements.The secure node architecture can provide a fundamental basefor securing the active network infrastructure. We describe theintegration of secure node architecture into an active network softwaresystem to demonstrate its flexible and innovative features.