Universities tapped to build secure Net

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/25/020925hnsecurenet.xml

By Scarlet Pruitt 
September 25, 2002 5:25 am PT

AMID HEIGHTENED CONCERNS over the Internet's continued vulnerability
to failure or attack, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is
expected to announce Wednesday that it has enlisted five university
computer science departments to develop a secure, decentralized
Internet infrastructure.

The joint project, dubbed Infrastructure for Resilient Internet
Systems (IRIS), aims to use distributed hash table (DHT) technology to
develop a common infrastructure for distributed applications.

DHT is like having a file cabinet distributed over numerous servers,
explained Frans Kaashoek, a professor of Computer Science and
Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an
IRIS project head. So if one server goes down, not all of the data is
compromised.

Like in peer-to-peer networks, there is no central server in the
system that contains a list of where all the data, or files in the
cabinet, are located. Instead, each server has a partial list of where
data is stored in the system. The trick for the researchers is
creating a "lookup" algorithm that allows the location of data to be
found in a short series of steps.

Another challenge, according to Kaashoek, is creating a software
interface to access the system.

The researchers hope that they can create a robust, distributed
network that could essentially act as a secure storage system for the
Internet. Governments, institutions and businesses worldwide could
theoretically choose to place their data in the secure system, which
would minimize the effects of outage or attack.

The project comes amid increased concern over the Internet's
vulnerability to viruses and worms, or even a terrorism-related
cyberattack.

The NSF launched the project with a $12 million research award to MIT,
the University of California at Berkeley, the International Computer
Science Institute, New York University, and Rice University in
Houston. The award is spread over five years, and at the end of that
time period, the research team hopes to have a system in place,
Kaashoek said.

"Clearly, people are interested in building much more robust systems,
so our goal is exciting," Kaashoek said.

"But what is really exciting is that if we succeed, we could change
the world," he added.
 


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