Cryptographic Access Control In Remote Procedure Call

iii iv Traditional access control models which rely on a centralized reference monitor are not well suited for large-scale distributed systems. Cryptographic access control is a decentralized model, where access control is enforced solely based on possession of cryptographic keys. By including this access control scheme directly at the inter-process communication level, a distributed system can be created, where the confidentiality and integrity of all communication is built in by default, and where only authorized nodes are granted access to the system's assets. This thesis therefore investigates the possibilities of incorporating the cryp-tographic access control model into the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol. RPC is an inter-process communication paradigm that seeks to allow a program residing on one machine to call functions on another machine in a way simila