Having completed a prototype of IP message security with Diffie-Hellman key exchange, we are moving quickly to implement the message formats and conventions of the newly proposed IETF standards for IPv4 Authentication Headers and Encapsulation. In addition, we are implementing protocol described in the draft for the Photuris key exchange. We expect to demonstrate this at IETF in Dallas this year.
Routing security is a major focus, and we have been pursuing several threads of design and software engineering for RIP and OSPF. Secure group membership is a key idea in this work, and we are developing designs for robustly maintaining and distributing dynamic group membership information. We are also pursuing designs for secure distribution of group keys and the use of digital signatures on forwardable routing information.
Our design for "trusted domain objects" has been proceeding with the addition of a third address component to our security protocols. While local and remote addresses are part of almost all Internet session interfaces, we have added a security attribute descriptor to this list (which is not used by non-security protocols). In the future, a fourth component, indicating the base authentication protocol (which may well be a root certification authority, for example), will be added. Additional mechanisms to instantiate authentication subgraphs are in design.
We have developed an informal collection of protocol attributes that are relevant to composition: message length, address type, etc. Two tools for manipulating them are under development: one in Lisp for ad hoc rules, and one in Prolog for Lampson logic. The attributes and rule processing are being developed together and an initial release will be made early next year.