Security in a peer-to-peer distributed virtual environment

Abstract

Publisher Summary Distributed virtual environments (DVEs) belong to the most demanding applications, requiring a network with a high quality of service on one hand and high graphical and computational power of the participating hosts on the other. A DVE is a computer generated three-dimensional scene that is generated, displayed, and modified by multiple interconnected hosts simultaneously. Typical examples of DVEs are multi-player online games, military simulations, and virtual reality systems for engineering, medicine, or science. This chapter describes new security architecture for DVEs that covers three main aspects: access control, authentication, and confidentiality. The general issues of DVEs are considered in detail. The security aspects and the design goals of the security architecture are described. A concrete scenario is presented, which is explained in the chapter. The security architecture is developed. Finally, a conclusion and an outlook on future work are given.