On context in authorization policy

ABSTRACT

Authorization policy infrastructures are evolving with the complex environments that they support. However, the requirements and technologies supporting context are not yet well understood. Often implemented as condition functions or predefined attributes, context is used to more precisely control when and how policy is enforced. This paper considers context requirements and services in authorization policy. The properties and security requirements of context evaluation are classified. A key observation gleaned from this classification is the degree to which context functions share common properties. The Antigone Condition Framework (ACF) exploits these commonalities to provide a general purpose condition service and associated API. The prototype ACF design is presented and illustrated, and directions for future work considered.

REFERENCES

• 1: Jean Bacon , Ken Moody , Walt Yao, A model of OASIS role-based access control and its support for active security, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), v.5 n.4, p.492-540, November 2002 [doi>10.1145/581271.581276]
• 2: D. Bell and L. LaPadula. Secure Computer Systems: Mathematical Foundations and Model. Technical Report M74-244, MITRE Corperation, Bedford, MA, 1973.
• 3: Nina T. Bhatti , Matti A. Hiltunen , Richard D. Schlichting , Wanda Chiu, Coyote: a system for constructing fine-grain configurable communication services, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), v.16 n.4, p.321-366, Nov. 1998 [doi>10.1145/292523.292524]
• 4: Andrew D. Birrell , Bruce Jay Nelson, Implementing Remote procedure calls, Proceedings of the ninth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles, p.3, October 10-13, 1983, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States
• 5: Matt Blaze , Joan Feigenbaum , John Ioannidis , Angelos D. Keromytis, The role of trust management in distributed systems security, Secure Internet programming: security issues for mobile and distributed objects, Springer-Verlag, London, 2001
• 6: Matt Blaze , Joan Feigenbaum , Jack Lacy, Decentralized Trust Management, Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, p.164, May 06-08, 1996
• 7: M. Blaze, J. Feignbaum, J. Ioannidis, and A. Keromytis. The KeyNote Trust Management System - Version 2. Internet Engineering Task Force, September 1999. RFC 2704.
• 8: Trust management for IPsec, ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), v.5 n.2, p.95-118, May 2002 [doi>10.1145/505586.505587]
• 9: D. Box, D. Ehnebuske, G. Kakivaya, A. Layman, N. Mendelsohn, H. Frystyk Nielsen, S. Thatte, and D. Winer. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.2, June 2002. http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part1/.
• 10: Fabian Breg, Shridhar Diwan, Juan Villacis, Jayashree Balasubramanian, Esra Akman, and Dennis Gannon. Java RMI performance and object model interoperability: Experiments with Java/HPC++. Concurrency: Practice and Experience, 10(11--13):941--955, 1998.
• 11: R. Hayton, J. Bacon, and K. Moody. OASIS: Access Control in an Open, Distributed Environment. In Proceedings of 1998 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. IEEE, MAY 1998. Oakland, California.
• 12: John Ioannidis. Personal communication, December 2002.
• 13: Gregor Kiczales, John Lamping, Anurag Menhdhekar, Chris Maeda, Cristina Lopes, Jean-Marc Loingtier, and John Irwin. Aspect-oriented programming. In Proceedings European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, volume 1241, pages 220--242. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York, 1997.
• 14: Patrick Drew Mcdaniel , Atul Prakash, Policy management in secure group communication, 2001
• 15: P. McDaniel and A. Prakash. Antigone Secure Group Communication System. NASA Tech Briefs, 2001. to appear.
• 16: Patrick McDaniel , Atul Prakash, Methods and Limitations of Security Policy Reconciliation, Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, p.73, May 12-15, 2002
• 17: P. McDaniel, A. Prakash, and P. Honeyman. Antigone: A Flexible Framework for Secure Group Communication. In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Security Symposium, pages 99--114, August 1999.
• 18: P. McDaniel, A. Prakash, J. Irrer, S. Mittal, and T. Thuang. Flexibly Constructing Secure Groups in Antigone 2.0. In Proceedings of DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition II, pages 55--67. IEEE, June 2001.
• 19: B. Moore, E. Ellesson, J. Strassner, and A. Westerinen. Policy Core Information Model -- Version 1 Specification. Internet Engineering Task Force, February 2001. RFC 3060.
• 20: Unix~Man Page. dlopen man page. Linux Programmers Manual, Section 3.
• 21: G. Patz, M. Condell, R. Krishnan, and L. Sanchez. Multidimensional Security Policy Management for Dynamic Coalitions. In Proceedings of Network and Distributed Systems Security 2001. Internet Society, February 2001. San Diego, CA, to appear.
• 22: T. Ryutov and C. Neuman. Representation and Evaluation of Security Policies for Distributed System Services. In Proceedings of DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition, pages 172--183, Hilton Head, South Carolina, January 2000. DARPA.
• 23: Ravi S. Sandhu, Lattice-Based Access Control Models, Computer, v.26 n.11, p.9-19, November 1993 [doi>10.1109/2.241422]
• 24: Ravi S. Sandhu , Edward J. Coyne , Hal L. Feinstein , Charles E. Youman, Role-Based Access Control Models, Computer, v.29 n.2, p.38-47, February 1996 [doi>10.1109/2.485845]
• 25: Ravi~S. Sandhu and Pierrangela Samarati. Access Control: Principles and Practice. IEEE Communications Magazine, 32(9):40--48, 1994.
• 26: Mary Thompson, William Johnston, Srilekha Mudumbai, Gary Hoo, Keith Jackson, and Abdelilah Essiari. Certificate-based Access Control for Widely Distributed Resources. In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Security Symposium, pages 215--228, August 1999.
• 27: Steve Vinoski. CORBA: Integrating Diverse Applications Within Distributed Heterogeneous Environments. IEEE Communications Magazine, 14(2), February 1994.
• 28: A. Westerinen, J. Schnizlein, J. Strassner, Mark Scherling, Bob Quinn, Jay Perry, Shai Herzog, An-Ni Huynh, Mark Carlson, and Steve Waldbusser. Policy Terminology Draft. Internet Engineering Task Force, march 2001.
• 29: W. Yeong, T. Howes, and S. Kille. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Internet Engineering Task Force, March 1995. RFC 1777.
• 30: J. Zao, L. Sanchez, M. Condell, C. Lynn, M. Fredette, P. Helinek, P. Krishnan, A. Jackson, D. Mankins, M. Shepard, and S. Kent. Domain Based Internet Security Policy Management. In Proceedings of DARPA Information Survuvability Conference and Exposition, pages 41--53, Hilton Head, South Carolina, January 2000. DARPA.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.6 Security and Protection

General Terms:
Security

Keywords:
authorization, context, distributed systems, policy, policy-oriented programming, security requirements