Segurança adaptativa em aplicações coletivas cientes de contexto

Abstract

Wireless networks are available in different environments. Advances in nanotechnology make it possible to deploy computer systems in very small objects, surrounding us with "beings" with some processing capacity. In future, we will have several environments composed by smart objects – including the ability of adapting to the environment – comunicating and, possibly, executing some task in a collaborative way. Otherwise, more devices and applications brings more information traffic and becomes evident the needs for some security. Being it data restriction, access control or high availability. There are many factors that influence which algorithms should be chosen to warrant security: QoS requirement, hardware capacity, network conditions, etc. Each one of this features can influence the security policy to be adopted, and thus, a static set of algorithms is not the best way to warrant security in communication. A more intuitive solution to determine security in this situation is using a mechanism that is able to adapt the security algorithms choice according to the context in which the application is. Using as a start point the Middleware de Segurança Adaptativo para Computação Móvel, we propose several improvements to the original implementation and also a new approach considering group communication – not supported originally by the middleware, besides of mechanisms to send ordered and anonymous messages.