The Group Security (GSEC) Research Group

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Overview of GSEC

GSEC is an IRTF (Internet Research Task Force) Research Group formed to discuss issues related to multicast security. The IRTF is a sister organization of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). GSEC originated from the SMUG RG.

Chairs of GSEC

Chairs: Lakshminath Dondeti (Nortel) and Peter Dinsmore (NAI Labs)

GSEC Charter

The Group Security (GSEC) Research Group focuses on security issues of large and small groups that operate on networks, which may be running a bulk distribution method such as broadcast, multicast or anycast. GSEC investigates security topics that are emerging or immature technologies and not ready for standardization, such as novel models for group policy management, scalability issues for large groups, access control, authorization, and security for multiple-source multicast groups. GSEC focus is more general than multicast security and encompasses group membership management, key management, and policy management for groups of principals that may or may not use multicast communications. GSEC work includes the interaction between network protocols and security. GSEC emphasis is on the stability and convergence of security protocols that operate among groups that have various distinct characteristics of group
size, membership dynamics, topology, degree of interaction, latency requirements, centralized control, and bandwidth constraints

Examples areas of interest in GSEC are:
1. Group Policy Management. Group Policy Management considers alternative models of group control and the policy parameters that describe group authorization. Groups can have a single locus of authorization as in the Group-Owner/Group-Controller Model or coalitions of Group Owners, which may operate across policy domains.
2. Decentralized Group Key Management. The design of fault tolerant protocols that are robust in decentralized models of group key management. These models do not use a single centralized KDC and are important for small, dynamic groups (or coalitions) in a variety of applications such as small group teleconferencing and fault-tolerant routing.
3. Security technologies for closed and open groups. Open groups are those where non-members are allowed to communicate with the group. Such groups might require a notion of a "group public key", for example.
4. Multiple Senders. Multiple-source groups have special requirements for denial of service protection and for minimizing state needed for sender authentication.
5. Group Key Management. New protocols to distribute a common group key to all group members that exhibit differing properties of scalability, processing requirements energy usage, storage, and inter-member communications are part of the research agenda. These topics are especially relevant to emerging wireless applications.
6. Non-multicast security. Previous work has focused on application of group security to multicast transport. New work that focuses on groups that use some transport other than multicast, such as broadcast or anycast, is of interest. This includes group key management for ad-hoc networking
7. Reliable Multicast. The relationship between secure multicast and reliable multicast is not well understood. Additional research is required to clearly articulate the reliability that can be assumed by security services, and the security that can be provided to reliability services.

The goals of GSEC with respect to these areas of investigation include the following.
o Review of past and current work in each area; evaluation of the available technologies and collaboration with those working in these areas.
o Development of new technologies where needed and presentation at appropriate conferences and gatherings o Identification of technologies that are ready for standardization in the IETF

MEETINGS: Meetings are typically held concurrent with IETF meetings (three times a year) with special meetings being called on an as-needed basis.

MEMBERSHIP: The GSEC Research Group is an open IRTF RG. The meetings and mailing list are open to all participants. Participants are encouraged to be deeply knowledgeable of the literature and current technologies related to security, multicast, and group communications.

GSEC Mailing List

To join the GSEC mailing list, send "subscribe gsec" to majordomo@lists.tislabs.com. Postings are to gsec@lists.tislabs.com

GSEC Mailing List Archive

Group Security mailing list archives

GSEC Meetings

This is the list of past GSEC meetings, with minutes and slides of some presentations at the meeting.

GSEC IRTF Drafts

IRTF drafts formally submitted through GSEC and carry the irtf-title.

GSEC Bibliography

Bibliography of papers and Book on multicast security and group security.