Multi criteria authentication in Peer to Peer Systems based on multi dimensional administration graphs

Secure authentication in P2P environments has been a central point of attention, since centralized legal infrastructure don’t exist in those environments. Different works has been introduced providing required facilities to make such a process possible in a secure manner. Most of these concepts propose the use of Public/Private Key encryption as a secure authentication approach. Public Key cryptography is an established method, which enables secure communication between two parties in insecure environments. Any facility in P2P environment, which aims to use the Public key approach for a secured authentication and communication, must provide a substitute for the required appropriate services in P2P environment, as there is no certificate authority there. The present work uses also the strength of the Public/Private Key encryption for secure communication and as a part of the authentication process. One of important aspect of using this authentication credential in P2P networking environment is their accessibility in the whole network as there is no CA (Center of authority) there. This work is concentrated on this matter and provides a concept for an administration graph maintaining a structure for secure disseminating Public Key of peers in the whole network. This administration graph is thought to replace the role of CA in P2P networking environments as well as providing other possibilities like distribution of peer’s resources in the network. The designed administration graph supports also creation of community and groups with hierarchical permissions for members. In addition to this structure required functionalities are provided to perform secured authentication between unknown and known peers in P2P environments using a multi criterion approach. The used approach uses the strength of Public/Private Key as the first authentication criterion and additionally uses a relation/session based shared secret as the second authentication criterion.