Security and Privacy in Future Internet Architectures - Benefits and Challenges of Content Centric Networks

Abstract: As the shortcomings of our current Internet become more and more obvious, researchers have started creating alternative approaches for the Internet of the future. Their design goals are mainly content-orientation, security, support for mobility and cloud computing. The probably most popular architecture is called Content Centric Networking. Every communication is treated as a distribution of content and caches are used within the network to improve the effectiveness. While the performance gain of Content Centric Networks is undoubted, there are questions about security and especially privacy since it is not one of its main design principle. In this work, we compare the Content Centric Networking approach with the current Internet with respect to security and privacy. We analyze improvements that have been made and new problems that have yet to be resolved. The Internet of the future could be content-oriented, so it is essential to identify potential security and privacy issues that are inherent to the architecture early on.