A CONCURRENT SOLUTION TO COMPUTER SECURITY

This paper illustrates methods by which parallel processing may be used to construct computer systems that offer a much higher level of security than at present. As an example, the problem of devising a secure network login protocol is considered. Such protocols exist, but are not widely used, because the algorithms require calculations involving large integers and these are computationally expensive. Some of the ways in which concurrent programming techniques may be used to 'speed up' the execution of such protocols are discussed and it is shown how it would be cost-effective to add parallel 'accelerator' boards to a computer system for the purpose of executing such algorithms.