Key aspects of the UNICORE 6 security model

This paper presents the security architecture of the sixth version of the UNICORE grid middleware. The sixth iteration of UNICORE introduced a number of new, security-related solutions which make UNICORE distinguishable from the other grid middleware as Globus, gLite or NorduGrid ARC, and these are presented in this paper. The paper discusses the low level security: users authentication, non-repudiation control and trust delegation. The UNICORE unique approach to the challenge of trust delegation is called explicit trust delegation (ETD); discussion of this constitutes the most significant and extensive part of this paper. ETD is compared with the popular grid security infrastructure (GSI). High level security services (such as authorization services) are not described in this paper.

Research highlights► Key aspects of UNICORE 6 security are presented, focusing on trust delegation ► UNICORE employs a proprietary solution to trust delegation called ETD ► ETD provides a clear assignment of actor roles ► ETD does not require a frequent refreshing of delegation assertions ► Non-repudiation and authentication is guaranteed.