Multicast receiver access control by IGMP-AC

Abstract

IP multicast is best-known for its bandwidth conservation and lower resource utilization. The present service model of multicast makes it difficult to restrict access to authorized End Users (EUs) or paying customers. Without an effective receiver access control, an adversary may exploit the existing IP multicast model, where a host or EU can join any multicast group by sending an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) join message without prior authentication and authorization. We have developed a novel, scalable and secured access control architecture for IP multicast that deploys Authentication Authorization and Accounting (AAA) protocols to control group membership. The principal feature of the access control architecture, receiver access control, is addressed in this paper. The EU or host informs the multicast Access Router (AR) of its interest in receiving multicast traffic using the IGMP protocol. We propose the necessary extensions of IGMPv3 to carry AAA information, called IGMP with Access Control (IGMP-AC). For EU authentication, IGMP-AC encapsulates Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) packets. EAP is an authentication framework to provide some common functions and a negotiation of the desired authentication mechanism. Thus, IGMP-AC can support a variety of authentications by encapsulating different EAP methods. Furthermore, we have modeled the IGMP-AC protocol in PROMELA, and also verified the model using SPIN. We have illustrated the EAP encapsulation method with an example EAP method, EAP Internet Key Exchange (EAP-IKEv2). We have used AVISPA to validate the security properties of the EAP-IKEv2 method in pass-through mode, which fits within the IGMP-AC architecture. Finally, we have extended our previously developed access control architecture to accomplish inter-domain receiver access control and demonstrated the applicability of IGMP-AC in a multi-domain environment.