Framework for Authentication and Access Control of Client-Server Group Communication Systems

Group communication systems are building tools for distributed and collaborative applications that often run in an insecure environment. Although necessary, basic security services such as data secrecy and data integrity are not sufficient for a secure group communication system. Entity authentication and access control services are needed to provide the application with a policy enforcement mechanism. In this paper we present the design of a flexible and modular authentication and access control framework for client-server group communication systems. We discuss some of the challenges when designing such a framework and show an implementation of the framework in the Spread wide-area group communication toolkit.