On secure services for embedded mobile peer-to-peer systems
: a conceptual framework and its implementation in the coordination language SecureLime

  • Jean-Louis Buchholz
  • Julien Lange

Student thesis: Master typesMaster in Computer science

Abstract

The recent advances in short distance wireless communication resulted in the emergence of a new network topology, known as MANET, which stands for mobile ad hoc networks. An ad hoc network is formed by heterogeneous and potentially mobile devices bound together with short range wireless connections. These devices are considered to be peers because none of them has a statically assigned role. Indeed, they cannot rely on a pre-existing infrastructure such as a centralised server to interact with each other. Ad hoc networks raise many issues to be faced when building applications on top of them. In particular, the inherent heterogeneity of the involved devices requires a generic way of communication to be used by all peers. Furthermore, the lack of peers' reliability demands new means to handle highly dynamic connections between them. Finally, ad hoc networks are usually weaker against security attacks because of the use of wireless communications.
Defining a middleware hiding the complexity induced by these networks is the classical approach to ease the programmer's task. The space and time uncoupling provided by the tuple space model appears as an elegant and effective mean to develop such a middleware. This thesis actually experiments the development of an ad hoc middleware on top of a tuple space based coordination system. To achieve this goal, we proceed as follows. Firstly, we describe the SMEPP European project which intends to develop an ad hoc middleware which is equipped with a specification language, called SMoL. Secondly, in order to choose the most suitable coordination system on top of which we can build the SMEPP middleware, we survey a broad set of coordination models with regards to the SMEPP requirements. Thirdly, we propose a conceptual framework and its implementation in the coordination language SecureLime. The implementation consists in two components: a middleware API and a SMoL translator. Finally, we bring a critical point of view on our prototype implementation which notably opens new work perspectives.
Date of Award2008
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University of Namur
SupervisorJean-Marie Jacquet (Supervisor)

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