Integrating security in a group oriented distributed system

A distributed security architecture is proposed for incorporation into group oriented distributed systems, and in particular, into the Isis distributed programming toolkit. The primary goal of the architecture is to make common group-oriented abstractions robust in hostile settings in order to facilitate the construction of high-performance distributed applications that can tolerate both component failure and malicious attacks. These abstractions include process groups and causal group multicast. A delegation and access control scheme is also proposed for use in group-oriented systems. The focus is on the security architecture; particular cryptosystems and key exchange protocols are not emphasized