Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!topexpress.co.UK!cgg
From: cgg@topexpress.co.UK (Gray Girling)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Upper layers security
Message-ID: <17949.8906301144@vega.topexp.co.uk>
Date: 30 Jun 89 11:44:39 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 50

This is something of a delayed response to something Steve Kille said in
the X-Windows on ACSE or Transport layer discussion:

> Another reason for mapping onto ACSE is that it will give natural hooks for
> authentication and encryption services, which you would not get from a
> mapping onto transport.

Is this how people see the ISO 7498-2 security services being incorporated
into the upper layers? Two issues come to mind:

1) the choice of architectural places where security services could be 
   obtained:
   They *could* be provided from an ACSE, or
   they could be provided by one or more separate "security" ASEs, or
   they could be available, somehow, directly from the Presentation layer 
   [the use of encipherment is sometimes seen as something to do with the
   choice of transfer syntax]

2) the place of the encipherment mechanism:
   "encryption" is not (according to ISO 7498-2) a security service, it is only
   a mechanism that can be used to provide (one of a number) of them.  Should
   the Presentation layer provide a real encipherment service for the
   Application layer to use, or should it reside as a mechanism in the 
   Application layer?  If the latter, given that communicating Application
   entities do not necessarily share the same syntax, how does this 
   encipherment work? 

Has anyone any ideas?  These questions are currently being addressed in the
evolving upper layers security model - but are unresolved at the moment.

Gray Girling













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