Distributed Systems, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19

Security in Distributed Systems

19.1 Introduction

With the rapid growth of networking and Internet-based activities in our daily lives, security has become an important issue. The security concerns are manifold: If the computer is viewed as a trustworthy box containing legitimate software only, security concerns relate to data in transit. The main concern here is that almost all these communications take place over public networks, and these networks are accessible to anyone. So how do we prevent an eavesdropper from stealing sensitive data, like our credit card numbers or social security numbers that may be in transit over a public network? How can we preserve the secrecy of a sensitive conversation between two agencies over a public ...