Secure Network Programming: Difference between revisions

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Simon S. Lam was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame (2023) for "inventing secure sockets in 1991 and implementing the first secure sockets layer, named SNP, in 1993."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://cns.utexas.edu/news/accolades/computer-scientist-inducted-internet-hall-fame|title=Simon S. Lam, Regents Chair Emeritus in Computer Science, inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/simon-s-lam |title=Simon S. Lam, 2023 Internet Hall of Fame inductee}}</ref>

This work began in 1991 as a theoretical investigation by the Networking Research Laboratory on the formal meaning of a protocol layer satisfying an upper interface specification as a service provider and a lower interface specification as a service consumer.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lam |first1=Simon |last2=Shankar |first2=Udaya |title=A Theory of Interfaces and Modules I — Composition Theorem |journal=IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering |date=January 1994 |volume=20 |pages=55–71 |doi=10.1109/32.263755 |url=https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=631099 |accessdate=21 July 2019|url-access=subscription }}</ref> A case study of adding a security layer between the application and [[network layer]]s was presented.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lam |first1=Simon |last2=Shankar |first2=Udaya|last3=Woo |first3=Thomas |title=Proceedings. 1991 IEEE Computer Society Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy |chapter=Applying a theory of modules and interfaces to security verification |date=May 1991 |chapter-url=https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/lam/Vita/IEEE/LSW91.pdf | pages=136–154|doi=10.1109/RISP.1991.130782 |isbn=0-8186-2168-0 |s2cid=18581606 | access-date=5 January 2021}}</ref>

The Networking Research Laboratory received a grant from the National Security Agency in June 1991 to investigate how to apply their theory of modules and interfaces to security verification.<ref>Simon S. Lam (PI/PD), "Applying a Theory of Modules and Interfaces to Security Verification", NSA INFOSEC University Research Program grant no. MDA 904-91-C-7046, 6/28/91 to 6/27/93.</ref> At that time, there were three well-known authentication systems built (MIT's [[Kerberos (protocol)|Kerberos]]) or being developed (DEC's SPX and IBM's KryptoKnight). All of these systems suffered from a common drawback; namely, they did not export a clean and easy-to-use interface that could be readily used by Internet applications. For example, it would take a tremendous amount of effort to "kerberize" an existing distributed application.