SCONES: Secure Content-Oriented Networking for Exploring Space, Phase I

Secure content-oriented networking has commercial applications in publish-subscribe systems, peer-to-peer networks, future Internet architectures, and scenarios that involve mobile and episodically connected users. Our approach enables content network infrastructure to be outsourced, and content caching and retrieval can occur without compromising the confidentiality. In addition the proposed effort has applications in the defense, the intelligence community, and in law enforcement, especially when significant resource sharing and collaboration across multiple organizations must occur over third party infrastructures. A key benefit of the proposed innovation is that it enables third party infrastructure to serve as cache and forward relay nodes that make content-oriented decisions on caching and forwarding (so that resources are appropriately utilized) without loss of confidentiality. In other words, using the proposed approach, an intermediate node can match content to user subscriptions without learning anything about the content. This will become increasingly important as NASA moves toward its vision of a shared Space Communications and Navigation infrastructure that will be shared across multi-national missions and organizations. The work, although motivated using networks for space exploration, applies equally to other NASA enterprise networks in which scientists require secure and seamless access to content. More »