A Secure European System

February 1996 / International Features / How to Keep Secrets Secret / A Secure European System

SESAME, or Secure European System for Applications in a Multi-vendor Environment, is a European research and development project, partly funded by the Commission of the European Union under its RACE program. Its goal is to develop single-sign-on technology with added features for distributed access control and cryptographic protection of interchanged data. The SESAME construction kit is a set of security infrastructure components. Developers can use these components as the bedrock on which to build fully managed single-sign-on products.
To access a distributed system, a user first logs on to an authentication server to get a cryptogr aphically protected token used to prove his or her identity. The user then presents the token to a privilege attribute server to obtain a guaranteed set of access rights contained in a privilege attribute certificate (or PAC). The PAC is a specific form of access control certificate that conforms to European Computer Manufacturers Association and ISO/ITU-T standards.
The promulgation, protection, and use of PACs are central features of SESAME. SESAME also supports delegation, by which an application gets access rights to act on the user's behalf. It is compliant with X.509 directory user certificates and revocation lists, following ISO/ITU-T standards. The integrity and confidentiality of user data passed between a client and a server can be protected using specially created dialogue keys.For more information on SESAME, visit this Web site: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/cosic/sesame3.html

Up to the International Features section contents

Go to previous article: A Secure European System

Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

more...

BYTE Digest editors every month analyze and evaluate the best articles from Information Week, EE Times, Dr. Dobb's Journal, Network Computing, Sys Admin, and dozens of other CMP publications—bringing you critical news and information about wireless communication, computer security, software development, embedded systems, and more!

Find out more

BYTE CD-ROM

NOW, on one CD-ROM, you can instantly access more than 8 years of BYTE.

The Best of BYTE
Volume 1: Programming Languages

In this issue of Best of BYTE, we bring together some of the leading programming language designers and implementors...

Copyright © 2005 CMP Media LLC, Privacy Policy, Your California Privacy rights, Terms of Service
Site comments: webmaster@byte.com
SDMG Web Sites: BYTE.com, C/C++ Users Journal, Dr. Dobb's Journal, MSDN Magazine, New Architect, SD Expo, SD Magazine, Sys Admin, The Perl Journal, UnixReview.com, Windows Developer Network