A secure and reliable monitor and control system for remote observing with the Large Millimeter Telescope

Remote access to telescope monitor and control capabilities necessitates strict security mechanisms to protect the telescope and instruments from malicious or unauthorized use, and to prevent data from being stolen, altered, or corrupted. The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) monitor and control system (LMTMC) utilizes the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) middleware technology to connect remote software components. The LMTMC provides reliable and secure remote observing by automatically generating SSLIOP enabled CORBA objects. TAO, the ACE open source Object Request Broker (ORB), now supports secure communications by implementing the Secure Socket Layer Inter-ORB Protocol (SSLIOP) as a pluggable protocol. This capability supplies the LMTMC with client and server authentication, data integrity, and encryption. Our system takes advantage of the hooks provided by TAO SSLIOP to implement X.509 certificate based authorization. This access control scheme includes multiple authorization levels to enable granular access control.