Agile Management of Dynamic Collaboration

The project comprises several related research threads, each described briefly here. More detailed information may be found in the individual publications available from this site..

Trust Management

We are concerned here with the design and analysis of trust management systems and tractable policy languages.  The work focuses on providing formal foundations for access control mechanisms, developing Role-Based Trust Management, a new trust concept, and efficient algorithms for certificate discovery among distributed storage centers.

• An overview of central concepts in trust management, and a brief description of our proposals.
• Research Personnel
• Mailing list info

Securing the Jini architecture

We investigate mechanisms for securing the Jini platform for distributed services by integrating trust management into the existing protocols.

• A description of the Jini architecture and modifications required to enable trust mechanisms.
• Research Personnel
• Mailing list info

Mobile Code Security and Bytecode Instrumentation

Our focus here is on providing techniques and systems which allow for user-specified policy-directed instrumentation of Java bytecode to enforce security constraints at run-time.

• An introduction to bytecode instrumentation and its application to securing Jini mobile code environments.
• Research Personnel
• Mailing list info

Protocol Analysis and Formal Methods

Using formal methods tools, we are studying wireless protocols like AODV and more generally investigating the connection with wired-network coalition management.  This effort has already resulted in the discovery of flaws in the AODV protocol, and research into extensions of predicate abstraction to allow proofs of liveness for dynamic routing and security protocols.  Please see the publications page for links to relevant papers.

• Research Personnel
• Mailing list info

Mobile networked environments

Our efforts in this area include the design and analysis of ad-hoc routing protocols and tools for simulation and measurement of their behavior.  (Please see the publications page for links to relevant papers.) We are also investigating the integration of dynamic trust concepts in the Mobile People architecture, through the use of trusted proxies.

• The Mobile People Architecture home page, and IdentiScape for long-lived personal identities
• Research Personnel
• Mailing list info

Peer-to-Peer infrastructures

A broad study into the design, analysis and simulation of peer-to-peer resource sharing protocols, with a focus on fast discovery and search times.

• Research Personnel
• Mailing list info