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Sizzle: The World's Smallest Secure Web Server -
technical details revealed in a new Sun Labs report - TR-2005-145
"Sizzle: A Standards-based End-to-End Security Architecture for the Embedded Internet" July 19, 2005 - We typically think of Web servers as useful only for serving pages from files, but a Web server can also be used for monitoring and controlling remote devices. Many homes today have a wireless, DSL or Cable modem router with an embedded web server that allows users to change and monitor its settings via a web browser. Described in this report, Sizzle, the world's smallest secure web server, runs efficiently on tiny, wireless, battery-powered devices called "motes". These devices range in size from a large coin to a matchbox and are equipped with inexpensive 8- or 16-bit processors and a mere 4KB to 10KB of RAM. Sizzle is designed to be embedded in a wide array of tiny devices including home appliances, utility meters, personal medical devices, lighting fixtures and industrial sensors for secure monitoring and control across the Internet.
While other small web servers have been demonstrated previously, none has addressed the capability of secure communication within such tight resource constraints. Sizzle implements the Internet's dominant security protocol, SSL, used to protect sensitive transactions like e-commerce, stock trading and on-line banking. A preliminary version of this report received the Mark Weiser Best Paper Award at the Third IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom2005) in Hawaii earlier this year. The work reported here extends prior work by adding support for RSA public-key cryptography. Now, any regular browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox) can communicate securely with Sizzle - not just specially modified versions of Mozilla and Firefox with Elliptic Curve Cryptography support. Furthermore, by studying the performance of Sizzle on different generations of mote devices, we offer insight into the impact of different technology trends (e.g., faster processors v/s faster networking). For more information:
Related work at Sun Labs: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
