WSEAS Transactions on Communications
Print ISSN: 1109-2742, E-ISSN: 2224-2864
Volume 11, 2012
Construction Methods of Closed Users Group Using Multi-Party Protocol
Authors: , ,
Abstract: In recent years, the Internet has become the most important infrastructure in the information society. Until now, a client-server system such as e-mail or WWW that is offered by a fixed service provider has played an important role. However, in such client-server systems, it is impossible to continue to provide services when the servers are halted by some failure. For this reason, a pure Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network, in which a user also acts as a provider, has lately attracted considerable attention as a new commercial infrastructure, because it enables its users to provide a service without a dedicated server. However, it is difficult to provide security on a pure P2P network because each terminal on the network has the same privilege. In this paper, we study a construction method of a Closed Users Group (CUG) without any administration methods which can control user access to certain applications on a pure P2P network. In our method, we assume that each member of a CUG has a certification which is issued by a certification authority on a public key infrastructure (PKI) that enables members to communicate safely. We realize this PKI on a P2P network using a multi-party protocol. In addition, we study the reliability issues involved in this method and propose some methods of issuing a certification to a new member. Finally, we discuss strong points and applications of one of these methods.
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Keywords: Closed Users Group, Multi-party protocol, Certification authority, P2P network, Public key infrastructure, I2P Network