Virtual private networks for peer-to-peer infrastructures

The Nanodatacenters project aims to complement the paradigm of existing centralized server farms with a high number of small storage and communication devices located at the edges of the network. Utilizing previously unused resources like broadband internet access bandwith and idling set-top boxes, these nodes are able to host applications from different content providers offering various kinds of services, such as Video on Demand or online gaming, to end users. This setting does pose particular security challenges. As the devices operate under physical control of the end users, their integrity has be ensured and must be able to be verified by the network. This is achieved through the functionality of Trusted Computing. Additionally, the domains of the different content providers have to be isolated in such a way that an attacker cannot use one of them as a foothold to compromise or snoop on the operation of the network or another isolated domain. Another important requirement for datacenters are secure and reliable communications. As the set-top boxes are connected to the internet, cryptography has to be used to make sure that the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted data as well as endpoint authenticity are maintained and no content is delivered to rogue devices. This thesis analyses the properties required for the secure connection of nodes in such a network of livingroom datacenters and introduces a concept for a Virtual Private Network able to fulfill these requirements