ces 29 (2007) 224–228www.elsevier.com/locate/csi

Computer Standards & Interfa

The security analyses of RosettaNet in Grid

Jingwei Liu ⁎, Rong Sun, Weidong Kou, Xi Sun

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Xidian University, P.O. Box, 119, 710071 Xi'an, China

Received 23 October 2005; accepted 25 March 2006Available online 22 May 2006

Abstract

The RosettaNet is an e-commerce standard over the Internet and Grid is a computing infrastructure for resource sharing. How to build e-commerce applications based on the RosettaNet over the Grid infrastructure is what we are interested in this paper. We first introduce theRosettaNet and discuss the security strategy of the RosettaNet. Then, we look into the security issues of the Grid. Finally, we present how thesecurity of RosettaNet can be improved, particularly, in the Grid environment.© 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: E-commerce; RosettaNet; Grid computing; Security

1. Introduction

With the rapid advance of the communication networktechnology, great changes have been taken place in our dailylife, in terms of consuming and commerce. Peoplemake use of theconvenience of networks for trade, which leads to a worldwideupsurge of electronic commerce (e-commerce or EC). E-com-merce is to conduct commerce electronically. It involves in manyparties in commerce, such as the financial institutions, thesuppliers, the wholesalers, the manufactures, the consumersand so on. These parties can be classified into four categories,namely, trader, bank, consumer and certificate authority. Becauseof its advantages in reducing the cost and creating new marketopportunities, e-commerce has attracted people's attention aroundthe world. The e-commerce has provided a new mode for thecommerce activities. Because e-commerce has resulted in anincorporate market, which is independent of regional difference,this leads to a huge change in the global economic environment.

To address this new change, 40 IT companies founded aconsortium called RosettaNet [1] in February 1998. As a globalconsortium, RosettaNet has attained a significant worldwidepresence, with regional affiliates in the Americas, Europe, Japan,Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and China.

⁎ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: j_w_liu@hotmail.com (J. Liu), rong_sun@hotmsil.com

(R. Sun), weidong_kou@yahoo.com.cn (W. Kou), sunxi@mail.xidian.edu.cn(X. Sun).

0920-5489/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.csi.2006.03.009

RosettaNet is a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council, Inc.(UCC). The purpose of founding RosettaNet was to create,implement and promote open e-business process standards.RosettaNet is named after the Rosetta Stone, which is inscribedwith the same message in three languages that enabled scholarsto decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a similar way, the missionof RosettaNet is to establish a common language and standardprocesses for business-to-business (B2B) transactions. There arehundreds of corporations, including those which are not onlylarge in research scope but also having profound influence intechnology, such as SONY, IBM, NOKIA, ORACLE,MOTOR-OLA and so on, taking part in the management of RosettaNet.Today, RosettaNet has gained support from more than 500companies, dealing with revenue of more than $1 trillion inelectronic components (EC), information technology (IT) andsemiconductor manufacturing (SM). In January 18, 2005, thepress conference of RosettaNet Global Partners Conference2005 was held in Beijing successfully.

Unlike organizations focused on specific business units,elements or proprietary solutions, RosettaNet leverages existingopen e-business standards, guidelines and specifications for cross-platform, -application and -network communication. It takesstandards to the next level, creating e-business frameworks thatcross the boundaries of individual companies to enhance theinteroperability of business processes. Dictionaries, RosettaNetImplementation Framework (RNIF) [2] and Partner InterfaceProcess (PIP) are the three main parts of RosettaNet standards.RosettaNet dictionaries provide a common platform for

Fig. 1. Compare of the RosettaNet standards process with a conventionalbusiness.

225J. Liu et al. / Computer Standards & Interfaces 29 (2007) 224–228

conducting business within the supply chain, eliminate over-lapping efforts by individual companies and reduce confusion inthe procurement process due to each company's uniquely definedterminology. The RNIF core specification provides exchangeprotocols for quick and efficient implementation of RosettaNetstandards. The RNIF specifies information exchange betweentrading partner servers usingXML, covering the transport, routingand packaging, security, signals and trading partner agreement.

RosettaNet developed the Partner Interface Process (PIP)specification for public business processes between tradingpartners. PIPs are specialized system-to-system XML-baseddialogs that define business processes between trading partners(see Fig. 1). Each PIP specification includes a business do-cument with the vocabulary and a business process with thechoreography of the message dialog. Fig. 2 [3] shows that a PIP-based B2B transaction requires a trading agreement in placebetween trading partners. In practice, such an agreement iscreated prior to executing B2B transactions.

2. The security strategy of Grid [4–6]

Grid computing is one of the hottest computer research topicsnowadays. Since 1990's, Ian Foster et al. have done a lot of work[5–7]. Many large projects have been launched and conductedby many governments and research organizations. The Globusof USA is a well-known example. In Globus, there is the Grid

Fig. 2. Public and pr

Security Infrastructure (GSI), which establishes the safetyauthorization mode based on public key scheme and it involvesX.509 certification and Security Socket Layer, SSL.

In theGrid environment, all kinds of resources are dynamicallyconnectedwith the Internet. The communications among differentGrid nodes are passed through the Internet. The users submit tasksto the Grid environment through the Internet. All the main bodiesof the Grid environment can dynamically join into or withdrawfrom a virtual organization, which results in that the requirementfor security in Grid is more advanced than that of the Internet.

Owning to the particularities of the Grid environment, the Gridsecurity strategy must take the properties of Grid into account andguarantee the secrecy and integrality of the different main bodies'mutual discrimination and the communications among them.

For the safety guarantee of the Grid, the main targets of theGSI include:

1. Guaranteeing the communication safety between main bodiesin Grid, avoiding body counterfeiting and data leaking;

2. Sustaining the security of multivirtual organizations;3. Providing the single sign-on of users in Grid environment,

including the credit consignation, transfer, etc.

The security strategies of GSI are focused on the transportand application layers and both are emphasized simultaneouslyon the combination with the distributed security technologiesthat are currently available. Based on the public key scheme,GSI uses X.509 authentication and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)communication protocol. The realization of GSI is consistentwith Generic Security Service API (GSS-API), which isproposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as astandard API utilized in security system. The main securitytechnologies and mechanisms of GSI include security authen-tication, security identity's discrimination, communicationencryption, private key protection and single sign-on.

2.1. Security authentication [7]

The sticking point of GSI authentication is to use authenti-cation certificate. In the Grid environment, every user or service

ivate processes.

CA User User Proxy

Certificate

Signed by CA

Certificate

Signed by User

Certificate Signed

by Proxy

Fig. 3. Safe confidence chain based on GSI.

Preamble Header

Delivery Header

Service Header

Process Control

Activity Control

Action Control

Service Content

Action Message/Signal Message

Optional Attachments

Optional Digital Signature

HTTPs

SSLHTTPs SMTP

Other transport

Protocols

Transport and Lowerlayers

Other transportProtocols

RosettaNet

Business

Message in

MIME/S-MIME

message format

Fig. 4. RosettaNet network application model.

226 J. Liu et al. / Computer Standards & Interfaces 29 (2007) 224–228

needs to be identified by an authentication certificate. The au-thentication certificate of GSI includes the following four piecesof information:

• Name of main body, used to identify the man or other objectdenoted by the authentication certificate;

• Public key belonging to the main body, used in X.509authentication;

• Authentication center identifier of subscription certificate,recording the name of the authentication center;

• Digital signature of the authentication center, used to affirmthe validity of the authentication center.

2.2. Security identity's discrimination

If the main body of each side has a certificate and believes inthe individual authentication center, then how both sides canidentify each other is a problem referred to as discrimination.GSI utilizes the SSL protocol as its authentication protocol.Trust to the individual authentication center is the preconditionof authentication. In the realization, both sides should have thecertificate of the individual authentication center, which coversthe public key of the authentication center. In this way, it can beguaranteed that the certificate subscribed by both the authen-tication centers is legal.

2.3. Communication encrypt

GSI does not establish encrypt channel between the twocommunication parts under the default condition. Once themutual authentication succeeds, GSI is disengaged. If both sidesneed encrypt communication, GSI can easily establish a mutualsecret key to encrypt the information. The combination of thepublic key technique with the symmetry encryption technique isgenerally used. The integrity of communication must beconsidered so that the listener cannot modify the content evenif it gets the content by chance.

2.4. Security authorization and single sign-on

The process of mutual discrimination is necessary before theestablishment of connection between users under commonconditions. If one user wants to connect with several other users,several times of accessing to the document preserved private keyis required, i.e., several times of password input is required.Mutual authentication may be necessary when accessing to theresources. The process of mutual authentication will be veryfussy.

GSI has made explanation on the normal SSL protocol. As aresult, GSI has the ability of security authorization and thusdecreases the time of password input for the user to access to theprivate key. If a Grid computing needs multinetwork resourcesor need a proxy representing users to request resources, the GSIcan avoid password input by founding a proxy. A safeconfidence chain can be formed among different nodes. SeeFig. 3.

3. Improvement of RosettaNet security strategy in Gridenvironment

Because the RosettaNet users in the Internet can unprece-dentedly take the information automatically to trade, improve-ment on the safety and secrecy of data is extremely necessary.All the cooperative associates become identical in their views intrade of determining how to use, store and spread information.

In essence, the Internet security guarantees commonlyprovide the following two security services, access controlservice and communication security service. The Grid environ-ment must satisfy the requirement of users to use any kind ofprovided resources safely and efficiently. At the same time, theGrid environment must be connected with the Internet andprovide user with wieldy services. As a result, the Grid en-vironment must be able to withstand any kind of illegal attackand intrusion as well as maintain system's natural high-efficiency running and guarantee the safety of all kinds ofinformation in the system at the condition of suffering fromattack and intrusion. We can draw the conclusion that thesecurity problems of RosettaNet in the Grid environment aremuch wider and much more complex in resolvent than those inthe ordinary Internet.

As an elementary implementation frame of RosettaNet, RNIFprovides the trade collaborators with an open, interactional andsafe elementary passage for trade flow. For the documents re-ferred to in business trade, it has defined the format of com-mercial information, including the authentication, authorization,encryption, non-repudiation and so on. It also includes the

MIME

Multipart/Related

RosettaNet

Message

(Signature)

Header

Action /Signal Message

Attachment 1

Attachment n

Service Content

Preamble Header

Delivery Header

Service Header

Payload

(Encrypt)

Fig. 5. RosettaNet business message format.

227J. Liu et al. / Computer Standards & Interfaces 29 (2007) 224–228

provision to the transfer protocols (such as HTTP, etc.) and thecriterion of effective inter-information between collaborators.By now, the up to date version of RNIF is RNIF2.0, which is avigorous, advanced criterion concerning transfers, routing andencapsulation (see Fig. 4). It decreases the cost of B2B business,increases the security property of commerce network andrealizes the interactional operation.

Because RosettaNet is propitious to amalgamation of diver-sified protocols, the SSL protocol v.3 and its following com-patible versions can be used to guarantee the transfers safety. TheSSL v.3 is provided only by the resolvent provider. It is found byanalyzing that the Grid environment itself uses the SSL protocolto ensure the security of transport layer. It follows that theRosettaNet in the Grid environment need not reconsider thetransport layer protocol. The Grid guarantees the bottom'ssafety, thus cuts down the fussy approaches between collabora-tors and increases the realization efficiency of RosettaNet.

The connect problem of users' single sign-on is introducedin the Grid environment. By founding the user proxy, theRosettaNet users need the authentication only once at thebeginning, while no authentication is needed again in the processof inter-communication and resource usage. A proxy contains anew certificate that is signed by users but not by the authen-tication center. There are new public key, private key, user'sidentifier, marker of the proxy and the time-countermark. If thetime expressed by the time-countermark is within a determinaterange, the proxy effective. The private key of the proxy must beensured safety. Because the time-limitation of the proxy validity,once the proxy is founded, the users can use the proxy certificateand the user proxy to make identity discriminations without thepassword input. The discrimination process using the proxy isdifferent from the process between the user and proxy. In theformer one, the required side will receive the certificates of theuser and that of the proxy signed by the user. In the process ofdiscrimination, the user's public key of the user certificate isused to affirm the validity of the digital signature in the proxycertificate. An “authentication center-user-proxy” credit chain isformed in this way. Under the condition of Grid, introducing theproxy scheme into RNIF frame, the authentication processbetween one-user with several users can be simplified. Theefficiency of the RosettaNet standards realization will be greatlyimproved.

In the Grid environment, the Multipart/signed, Application/pkcs7-mime and Enveloped-data styles of S/MIME (SecureMultipurpose Internet Mail Extension) are respectively used tomake digital signing and enveloping after the duologue of thestandard users in RosettaNet with other users is established. Therules for creating MIME entities for signing and enveloping areoutlined in RFC 2311 and are defined in RFC 2045–2049. Infact, a single procedure is used for creating MIME entities thatare to be signed or enveloped. Some additional steps are recom-mended to defend against known corruption that can occurduring mail transport and that are of particular importance forclear-signing using the multipart/signed format.

In the process of transmission, the digital certificate used byRNIF is one part of the RosettaNet signing messages. Theapplication of digital certificate is in accordance with the “S/

MIME certificate handling” in RFC2321. According to the S/MIME certificate handling specification, receiving agents mustsupport X.509 v1 and X.509 v3 certificates. The specificationalso requires that endentity certificates include an Internet mailaddress for the sender and that receiving agents must be able tohandle an arbitrary number of certificates of arbitrary relation-ship to the message sender and to each other in arbitrary order.Since RNIF is defined in a transport-independent fashion, theInternet email address of the sender in the end-entity certificatesmay be omitted. RNIF also aligns with the S/MIME specifica-tion in the use of a single or a dual key pair for data signing andencryption. The sender must own the signer's public keycertificate and can also possess the certificate of relative issuer.The receiving agents will validate the received message whenthe incontestablility of a behavior message receiving needs to bevalidated (see Fig. 5).

RNIF leaves it to the Trading Partner Agreement to determinethe format of the certificate chains leading to the self-signed rootCertificate Authority (CA) certificates. The recipient should beable to support the types of certificate chains (complete andincomplete) described in the S/MIME certificate handlingspecification and directly trusted certificates (empty certificatechain). RNIF recommends but does not require the recipient toimplement a certificate-revocation list (CRL) retrieval mecha-nism in order to gain access to certificate revocation informationwhen validating certificate chains. RNIF recommends but doesnot require the recipient to retrieve and utilize CRL informationevery time a certificate is verified as part of a certificate chainvalidation, even if the certificate was already verified in the past.All certificate validation procedures are executed according tolocal security policy. In the Grid environment, though onlyauthorized users can enter the network, the messages transmittedamong the users are neither encrypted nor authenticated in-tegrality under default condition. Not all the contents are en-crypted by RNIF. Whether to encrypt the transmitted messagedepends on the protocols between collaborators and other sen-sitive factors such as the service content, the attachment. In thisway, hidden dangers on the leakage or modification of the

228 J. Liu et al. / Computer Standards & Interfaces 29 (2007) 224–228

content of business activities are imbedded. Encryption on mu-tual informationmust be needed in order to ensure the security ofRosettaNet standards implementation in Grid environment.RNIF permits encryption on the entire load or only on the servicecontent, improving flexibility. RNIF permits signing only on theentire RosettaNet business information, simplifying the imple-mentation. The answer to the business information and the ex-ceptional business information must be encrypted and signed inorder to protect the sensitive information included in RosettaNetexceptional business instruction.

4. Conclusions

As a new generation of basal establishment established abovethe Internet, Grid has great potentials and advantages over theInternet, which enables the sharing, exchange, discovery andaggregation of distributed resources in a secure way acrossmultiple administrative domains, organizations and enterprises.Applying RosettaNet, an electronic commerce standard based onthe Internet, to the Grid environment, combining the advantagesof the both, stronger security and much more flexibility can beobtained and the efficiency of the electronic commerce can begreatly improved. The development of Grid is still in faultiness.Andmany concrete problems are still unsolved. Further researchefforts are needed to exploit this area. Especially, it is significantand valuable for both researchers and engineers to investigatehow to integrate grid and RosettaNet technologies for large-scalebusiness applications to support virtual organizations.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by National Natural ScienceFoundation of China under Grant No. 90304008, No. 60373104and No. 90604009.

References

[1] http://www.RosettaNet.org.[2] RosettaNet Implementation Framework: Core Specification. Version:

v02.00.01, 6 March 2002.[3] Suresh Damodaran, B2B Integration over the Internet with XML–

RosettaNet Successes and Challenges, Proceedings of the ThirteenthWorld Wide Web Conference (WWW 2004), May 17–22, 2004,pp. 188–195 [ACM 1-58113-912-8/04/0005, New York City].

[4] http://www.Globus.org.

[5] I. Foster, C. Kesselman, G. Tsudik, A security architecture for computa-tional grids, Proc. 5th ACM Conference on Computer and CommunicationsSecurity Conference, 1998, pp. 83–92.

[6] Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman, The Grid: Blueprint for a New ComputingInfrastructure, 2nd Edition. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN:1-55860-933-4,2004.

[7] L. Pearlman, V. Welch, I. Foster, C. Kesselman, S. Tuecke, A communityauthorization service for group collaboration, IEEE 3rd InternationalWorkgroup on Policies for Distributed Systems and Networks, 2001.

Jingwei Liu received his B.S. Degree in AppliedMathematics and M.E. Degree in Communication andInformation Systems from Xidian University, Xi’an,China, in 2001 and 2004, respectively. He is currentlyworking towards his Ph.D Degree at Xidian University.His research interests are in E-commerce, informationsecurity and cryptology.

Rong Sun received a B.S. Degree in CommunicationEngineering and M.E. Degree in Communication andInformation Systems from Xidian University, Xi’an,China, in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Sun is currentlyworking towards a Ph.D Degree at Xidian University.Research interests are in information theory, channelcoding and modulation.

Weidong Kou received his Ph.D Degree in Commu-nication and Information Systems from Xidian Uni-versity, Xi’an, China, in 1985. Since 2001, he has beenwith the State Kay Lab on ISN, Xidian University,where he is now a professor. His research interests arein E-Business, information security and communicationnetwork security.

Xi Sun received a B.S. Degree in Communication Engineering and M.E. Degreein Communication and Information Systems from Xidian University, Xi’an,China, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He is currently working towards his Ph.DDegree at Xidian University. His research interests are in Cryptology andinformation security.