Using CORBA Interceptors to Implement a Security Wrapper

This work demonstrates the use of CORBA portable interceptors in the implementation of a security wrapper for a security unaware application. The fundamental advantage of interceptor-based approaches is the separation of security-oriented logic from business-oriented logic, which ultimately results in enhanced extensibility and reusability of security related components. The paper presents the design of an interceptor-based security wrapper which provides strong authentication to a security unaware application, and discusses its implementation on top of a IONA ORBIX 2000-based platform. The authentication procedure relies on a challenge-response protocol, which uses X509 digital certificates. The performance penalty due to the execution of cryptographic functions is evaluated and discussed.