Beacon based approach to network security

In 1993, there were an estimated two million hosts connected to the Internet with a user population of around twenty million, in seventy countries. Increasingly, the information being transmitted within the Internet community is sensitive and concerns about data privacy and integrity are growing. This thesis examines the internet environment and the issues that have lead to this raised level of concern regarding security. We will also examine some of the primitive cryptographic services that are available to promote trust between users.