Our p2p-sip architecture (see the previous 'external DHT' post) suggests using email address as user identity for SIP. In particular, our web CGI script (as a certifying authority, CA) generates the user certificate verifying that the user owns the identifier, say bob@example.net, and send this to the email address bob@example.net.
This serves two purposes: (1) no login server: unlike Yahoo/MSN/Skype that need to connect to 'login server' on every login attempt, our p2p-sip uses the (central) CA only for first time use. The user certificate also gets stored in the P2P network, thus no need to connect to the 'login server' again. (2) any identity provider: unlike Yahoo/MSN/Skype/G-Talk that tie the identifier to a particular provider (i.e., @yahoo.com for Yahoo users), we can allow any user identifier as long as the identifier belongs to him.
To avoid use of a single identity (service) provider, one option is to use user's email address as his SIP user id. Thus, identity verification just involves making sure that his user id is a valid email address that belongs to him, and that user has a certificate that proves this.
Our web CGI script generates user certificate, where the user public key and certificate request is supplied by the user (automatically by sipc, on first time use). But to make sure that the user id is his email address, the certificate is sent in the email. This prevents you from using user id "bill@microsoft.com" because you can't get a certificate from our CA unless you own this email address. But if you have an email address say "bob@yahoo.com" or "Robert@msn.net" you can use this as your SIP identifier in p2p-sip, thus not tied to a single provider.
Sending in email is just one of the ways. Alternatively, if a group of users already have user certificates from other trusted entity such as verisign, they don't need to do email based certificates. Another possibility for future work is to also allow 'tel:' identity if the user can call from that telephone number (with caller id) to our VoiceXML service script that verifies that the user owns this telephone number and issues a new certificate (by directly storing in the DHT). This way other friends who know his phone number instead of email address, can also reach him on p2p-sip. Making an outbound call to tel: (similar to sending outbound email) for identity verification is probably not a good idea, unless user somehow pays for the call.
Identity protection (no one else can steal your identity) and verification (others can verify that you own this identity) is just one part of the P2P-SIP security. And using an email-based identity moves the problem of identity issuance and protection from P2P-SIP to your email provider.
2 comments:
What if the user changes email providers? Would this then nullify their p2p sip address, or would they just re-register?
In email-based identity, if the user uses a new email address as an identity then the p2p sip system will consider this as a new user; thus old keys are no longer valid for the new identity, but user can register with new identity. As long as others know the new email identity, they can reach him.
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