Secure interoperability

Secure interoperability - Standard. An ORB conforming to standard secure interoperability can generate and use security information in the Interoperable Object Reference (IOR) and can send and receive secure requests to/from other ORBS using the General Inter-ORB Protocol/ Inter-ORB Interoperability Protocol (GIOP/IIOP) protocol, with the Secure Inter-ORB Protocol (SECIOP) enhancements defined in Section 15.8, Security and Interoperability, of the CORBASEC specification, if they both use the same underlying security technology.

Standard plus DCE-CIOP - Option. An ORB conforming to standard plus DCE-CIOP secure interoperability supports all functionality required by standard secure interoperability, and also provides secure interoperability (using the DCE Security services) between ORBs using the DCE-CIOP protocol.

If the ORB does not conform to one of these, it does not use the GIOP security enhancements, so will interoperate securely only in an environment-specific way.

Common Secure Interoperability (CSI) - confined to secure interoperability of object requests and replies via the GIOP/IIOP protocol.

[Bruno Traverson](September, 1998)¹³: Clause C.2 [ed: of the Appendix C in the CORBASEC sepcification v1.2] makes clear that conformance can be claimed at two levels:

1.

CORBA Security Functionality that contains three folders:

• main functionality (level 1 or 2),
• functionality options (non repudiation),
• security replaceability (ORB services, Security services, Security Ready).

2.

CORBA Secure Interoperability :

• IIOP-SECIOP (SPKM, Kerberos, CSI-ECMA),
• Interop options (IIOP-SSL, DCE-CIOP),
• CSI Level 1,
• GSS Kerberos Protocol using MD5 Cryptographic profile.