DSI: A New Architecture for Secure Carrier-Class Linux Clusters

We presented the need for a new security approach for telecom applications running on carrier class Linux clusters. Based on our motivations to develop a coherent solution addressing the security needs of Linux carrier class clusters, we proposed a new design for a secure distributed infrastructure. We presented the main elements of this design and discussed some of the preliminary results. We believe that this design is a practical approach to enhance security for large-scale clusters with carrier-class needs.

To complete DSI, we plan to collaborate with open source initiatives and other organizations. The DSI team from Ericsson Research will be available at the Ottawa Linux Symposium for three allocated presentations on DSI. We will also be available at the IEEE Cluster Conference 2002 in Chicago. In addition, Ericsson Research will be hosting the annual Open Cluster Group meetings June 24-25 in Montreal, which will give us the opportunity to address the members of the group and get them involved with the DSI project.

We are currently preparing a web site that will be available in late June. It will provide DSI technical reports, presentations, source code and links to web sites of other contributors. We encourage people interested in DSI to contact any of the DSI team members (listed below) to receive detailed papers on the DSI architecture, strategy, source code and to discuss collaboration opportunities.

[1] ISO 10181-3: "Security Frameworks for Open Systems: Access Control Framework", ISO, 1996.

[2] ITU-U Recommendation X.800: "Security Architecture for Open Systems Interconnection for CCITT Applications", ITU-T (then CCITT), 1991.

[3] Loscocco P.: "Security-Enhanced Linux", Linux 2.5 Kernel Summit, San Jose (Ca) USA, 2001, www.nsa.gov/selinux/docs.html.

[4] "Linux Security-Module (LSM) framework", 2001, lsm.immunix.org.

[5] Foster I., Kesselman C., Tsudik G., Tuecke G., "A Security Architecture for Computational Grids", 5th ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security.

[6] Morris, J. "Selopt: Labeled IPv4 networking for SE Linux", www.intercode.com.au/jmorris/selopt

[7] Schreiner R., Lang U.: "MicoSec User's Guide", www.objectsecurity.com/micosec.html

Ibrahim Haddad is a Researcher at the Ericsson Corporate Unit of Research in Montreal, Canada. He is involved with the system architecture of third generation wireless IP networks and responsible for the IPv6 and a Security research activity at the Open Systems Lab.

Charles Levert works at the Ericsson Open Systems Lab in Montreal, Canada. He currently focuses on the topic of security in all-IP telecom clusters. He is a long-time user of and contributor to free software.

Makan Pourzandi works at the Ericsson Research Open Systems Lab as the Technical Leader for DSI. He received his doctoral degree on parallel computing in 1995 from the University of Lyon, France.

Miroslaw Zakrzewski works at the Ericsson Research Open Systems Lab. He is involved in research activities leading to the prototyping and development of carrier-class cluster access control mechanisms.

Marc Chatel is a member of the IS/IT network team of the Montreal, Canada, site of Ericsson Research.

Michel R. Dagenais is professor in the Computer Engineering Department, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, Canada. His research interests include distributed systems and software development tools.

David Gordon is a computer science intern from Sherbrooke University at the Ericsson Open Systems Lab.

Bruno J.M. Hivert is a system administrator at the Ericsson Corporate Unit of Research in Montreal, Canada, where he is involved in network and system administration for research laboratories, as well as Linux deployment.

Dominic Pellerin is a computer engineering intern from Sherbrooke University at the Ericsson Open Systems Lab.