The Case For Strong Authentication Of Network Traffic

The openness of networks and the Internet has undoubtedly led to the success and growth of public networks. New applications and features have flourished out of the lack of strict security requirements and the anonymity offered by public networks. However, this openness has also been arguably the single greatest enabler of annoyance and malicious use of networks and the Internet. Spam, denial-of-service attacks, address spoofing, routing attacks, and a myriad of other malicious uses are, at least partially, the result of allowing unauthenticated network traffic. This leaves network applications and protocols on their own to implementing security and attack prevention. In this essay, I will argue that we need to take at a different approach: strong authentication for network traffic. Network traffic authentication will enable security and protection from applications that demand it while still allowing for innovation in network applications.

Strong authentication of network traffic would provide a means for all traffic to be verified for integrity and identity of sender. Currently, most network traffic, especially IP traffic, provides no means for verifying the sender. IP specifically only requires a source address to as means to identify a sender. This is far from a strong form of authentication as IP addresses are easily faked. A strong authentication system, on the other hand, may utilize public key cryptography and multi-factor identification or some new technology to guarantee the identity of a sender and integrity of data sent. It is not my intention to argue in favor of a particular network traffic authentication mechanism but rather to show that one is needed and indeed feasible.

Problems with Unauthenticated Traffic

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...anisms for authenticating network traffic were never included in the design. To make matters worse, as the need for some sort of authentication or security measures began to arise, network devices where not yet powerful enough to where it was practical to implement authentication mechanisms. The cryptographic calculations involved in authentication were too computationally demanding to be performed in real-time. However, much more than just the uses of networks have changed since then, and it is time to move forward.

There is no longer a lack of processing power or foresight preventing us from implementing strong authentication for network traffic. We must be able to accept these original limitations as facts of the evolution of networks, recognize the current need for authentication, and move networking forward towards strong authentication of all network traffic.