A simple and expressive semantic framework for policy composition in access control\r\n
File(s)expressive-framework-access.ps (15.6 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Dantas, D
Bruns, G
Huth, M
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
In defining large, complex access control policies, one would like to compose sub-policies, perhaps authored by different organizations, into a single global policy. Existing policy composition approaches tend to be ad-hoc, and do not explain whether too many or too few policy combinators have been defined. We define an access control policy as a *four-valued* predicate that maps accesses to either *grant*, *deny*, *conflict*, or *unspecified*. These correspond to the four elements of the Belnap bilattice. Functions on this bilattice are then extended to policies to serve as policy combinators. We argue that this approach provides a simple and natural semantic framework for policy composition, with a minimal but functionally complete set of policy combinators. We define derived, higher-level operators that are convenient for the specification of access control policies, and enable the decoupling of conflict resolution from policy composition. Finally, we propose a basic query language and show that it can reduce important analyses (e.g. conflict analysis) to checks of policy refinement.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Version
Accepted version
Date Issued
2007-11
Citation
Formal Methods in Security Engineering: From Specifications to Code, 2007, pp.12-21
ISBN
978-1-59593-887-9
Publisher
ACM Press
Source Title
FMSE 2007
Conference
Formal Methods in Security Engineering: From Specifications to Code
Start Page
12
End Page
21
Journal / Book Title
Formal Methods in Security Engineering: From Specifications to Code
Copyright Statement
© ACM, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in WORKSHOP ON FORMAL METHODS IN SECURITY ENGINEERING, 2007 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1314436.1314439
Source
FMSE 2007
Source Place
Virginia, USA
Start Date
2007-11-02
Finish Date
2007-11-02
Coverage Spatial
Virginia, USA