CODEWITHSUNDEEP
securityudp
Soumya Simanta
Soumya Simanta

Reputation: 11751

Options for securing UDP Traffic

I'm looking for options for securing UDP traffic (mainly real-time video) on a wireless network (802.11). Any suggestions apart from Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 20

Views: 21929

Answers (4)

rioki
rioki

Reputation: 6118

Are you trying to wrap an existing application or writing your own? What client server setup do you have? Do you want to prevent snooping or tampering?

I am assuming here that you

  • are developing an application
  • are trying to prevent snooping
  • have access to client and server.

The simple approach is to use any off the self strong encryption. To prevent tampering use any signing algorithm with a private/public key scheme. You can use the same key pair for encryption and authentication.

The drawback of this approach is that it is on layer 7 and you have to do most of the work on your own. On the other hand, DTLS is a viable option...

Upvotes: 3

Andrew Strong
Andrew Strong

Reputation: 4363

Have you considered IPSEC? This article provides some good guidance on when and when not to use it.

Upvotes: 1

rook
rook

Reputation: 67039

You must be more clear about the attacks you are trying to defend against. For instance if your only concern is spoofing then you can use a Diffie–Hellman key exchange to transfer a secret between 2 parties. Then this secret can be used to generate an Message Authentication Code for each packet.

If you need any more protection I strongly recommend using DTLS. It should be noted that all TLS/SSL connections can be resumed so you can cut down on the number of handshakes. Also, certificates are free.

Upvotes: 4

Amardeep AC9MF
Amardeep AC9MF

Reputation: 19054

You can look into ssh with port forwarding. That comes at the cost of maintaining a TCP connection over which the UDP traffic can be secured.

Upvotes: 0

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