The SDSC encryption/authentication (SEA) system

Abstract

As part of the Distributed Object Computation Testbed project (DOCT) and the Data Intensive Computing initiative of the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI), the San Diego Supercomputer Center has designed and implemented a multi-platform encryption and authentication system referred to as the SDSC Encryption and Authentication, or SEA, system. The SEA system is based on RSA and RC5 encryption capabilities and is designed for use in an HPC/WAN environment containing diverse hardware architectures and operating systems (including Cray T90, Cray T3E, Cray J90, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, SGI, HP, NextStep, and Linux). The system includes the SEA library, which provides reliable, efficient, and flexible authentication and encryption capabilities between two processes communicating via TCP/IP sockets, and SEA utilities/daemons, which provide a simple key management system. It is currently in use by the SDSC Storage Resource Broker (SRB), as well as by user interface utilities to SDSC's installation of the High Performance Storage System (HPSS). This paper presents the design and capabilities of the SEA system and discusses future plans for enhancing this system. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.