12637975
Towards usage control models: beyond traditional access control
In this paper we develop the concept of Usage Control (UCON) that encompasses traditional access control, trust management, and digital rights management and goes beyond them in its definition and scope. While usage control concepts have been mentioned off and on in the security literature for some time, there has been no systematic treatment so far. By unifying these three areas UCON offers a promising approach for the next generation of access control. Traditional access control has focused on a closed system where all users are known and primarily utilizes a server-side reference monitor within the system. Trust management has been introduced to cover authorization for strangers in an open environment such as the Internet. Digital rights management has dealt with client-side control of digital information usage. Each of these areas is motivated by its own target problems. Innovations in information technology and business models are creating new security and privacy issues which require elements of all three areas. To deal with these in a systematic unified manner we propose the new UCON model. UCON enables finer-grained control over usage of digital objects than that of traditional access control policies and models. For example, print once as opposed to unlimited prints. Unlike traditional access control or trust management, it covers both centrally controllable environment and an environment where central control authority is not available. UCON also deals with privacy issues in both commercial and non-commercial environments. In this paper we first discuss access control, trust management, and digital rights management and describe general concepts of UCON in the information security discipline. Then we define components of the UCON model and discuss how authorizations and access controls can be applied in the UCON model. Next we demonstrate some applications of the UCON model and develop further details. We use several examples during these discussions to show the relevance and validity of our approach. Finally we identify some open research issues.
9807251
Originator Control in Usage Control
Originator Control is an access control policy that requires recipients to gain originator’s approval for redissemination of disseminated digital object. Originator control policies are one of the generic and key concerns of usage control. Usage control is an emerging concept which encompasses traditional access control and digital rights management solutions. However, current commercial Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions lack enforcement of access control policies such as role-based access control (RBAC), mandatory access control (MAC), discretionary access control (DAC) and originator control because their control of access to digital object is mainly based on payment. In this paper, we attempt to combine originator control policies and usage control. Then we show how this can extend traditional originator control solutions to enforce access control policies even outside of a local control environment where a central control authority is not available. License and ticket concepts are proposed and used for originator control in usage control. Also, we define seven different solution approaches to deal with various dissemination situations. In addition, we discuss some published DRM solutions and relate these to our solution approaches.
15806644
Attribute Mutability in Usage Control
The notion of Usage Control (UCON) has been introduced recently to extend traditional access controls by including three decision factors called authorizations, obligations, and conditions. Usage control also recognize two important decision properties of continuity and mutability. In access control literature, an authorization decision is commonly made by utilizing some form of subject and object attributes. Identities, security labels and roles are some examples of attributes. Traditionally these attributes are assigned to subjects and objects by a security officer and can be modified only by administrative actions. However, in modern information systems these attributes are often required to be changed as a side effect of subject’s usage on object. This requirement of updates has been recognized and defined as mutability property in usage control. In this paper, we discuss issues of this attribute mutability and show how usage control can apply this mutability property in various traditional and modern access control policies.
12252856
Usage Control: A Vision for Next Generation Access Control
The term usage control (UCON) is a generalization of access control to cover obligations, conditions, continuity (ongoing controls) and mutability. Traditionally, access control has dealt only with authorization decisions on a subject’s access to target resources. Obligations are requirements that have to be fulfilled by the subject for allowing access. Conditions are subject and object-independent environmental requirements that have to be satisfied for access. In today’s highly dynamic, distributed environment, obligations and conditions are also crucial decision factors for richer and finer controls on usage of digital resources. Traditional authorization decisions are generally made at the time of request but typically do not recognize ongoing controls for relatively long-lived access or for immediate revocation. Moreover, mutability issues that deal with updates on related subject or object attributes as a consequence of access have not been systematically studied. In this paper we motivate the need for usage control, define a family of ABC models as a core model for usage control and show how it encompasses traditional access control, such as mandatory, discretionary and role-based access control, and more recent requirements such as trust management, and digital rights management. In addition, we also discuss architectures that introduce a new reference monitor for usage control and some variations.
15933972
A logical specification for usage control
Recently presented usage control (UCON) has been considered as the next generation access control model with distinguishing properties of decision continuity and attribute mutability. Ausage control decision is determined by combining authorizations, obligations, and conditions, presented as UCONABC core models by Park and Sandhu. Based on these core aspects, we develop afirst-order logic specification of UCON with Lamport's temporallogic of actions (TLA). The building blocks of this model include:(1) a sequence of states expressed by attributes of subjects, objects, and the system, (2) state predicates on subject andobject attributes, (3) pre-defined authorization actions performed by the security system and subjects, (4) obligation actions, and(5) condition predicates on system attributes. For a UCON model we define a set of temporal logic formulas that hold as usage control policies. We show the flexibility and expressive capability of this logic model by specifying the new features and core models of UCON.
15361115
The UCONABC usage control model
In this paper, we introduce the family of UCONABC models for usage control (UCON), which integrate Authorizations (A), oBligations (B), and Conditions (C). We call these core models because they address the essence of UCON, leaving administration, delegation, and other important but second-order issues for later work. The term usage control is a generalization of access control to cover authorizations, obligations, conditions, continuity (ongoing controls), and mutability. Traditionally, access control has dealt only with authorization decisions on users' access to target resources. Obligations are requirements that have to be fulfilled by obligation subjects for allowing access. Conditions are subject and object independent environmental or system requirements that have to be satisfied for access. In today's highly dynamic, distributed environment, obligations and conditions are also crucial decision factors for richer and finer controls on usage of digital resources. Although they have been discussed occasionally in recent literature, most authors have been motivated from specific target problems and thereby limited in their approaches. The UCONABC model integrates these diverse concepts in a unified framework. Traditional authorization decisions are generally made at the time of requests but hardly recognize ongoing controls for relatively long-lived access or for immediate revocation. Moreover, mutability issues that deal with updates on related subject or object attributes as a consequence of access have not been systematically studied.Unlike other studies that have targeted on specific problems or issues, the UCONABC model seeks to enrich and refine the access control discipline in its definition and scope. UCONABC covers traditional access controls such as mandatory, discretionary, and role-based access control. Digital rights management and other modern access controls are also covered. UCONABC lays the foundation for next generation access controls that are required for today's real-world information and systems security. This paper articulates the core of this new area of UCON and develops several detailed models.
42838112
Trusted Identity and Session Management Using Secure Cookies
The concept of federated identity management is increasingly coming to use in order to bring Service Providers closer to customers. Users are being provided an enriched experience while carrying out business on the Web at reduced overhead and improved customer service. The idea of maintaining a single profile and gaining access to multiple services has been accepted well by the customers. However, the benefits of breaking through just one set of credentials to gain access to multiple services has made the concept of Federated Identity Management of high interest to malicious users. In this paper, we analyze the structure of a generic Federated Identity Management System and explore the .NET Passport framework in depth. We explore the current security mechanisms adopted by the .NET Passport and identify potential security weaknesses. We then propose our new approaches to enhance the security services in .NET Passport by using Secure Cookies. Our approaches are transparent to and compatible with the current .NET Passport server. Finally, we prove the feasibility by implementing our ideas in a real system.
6952634
A middleware approach for SAINT (secure, automatic, interoperable, and transparent) peer-to-peer content services
Expanded use of the Internet and technological advances are eliciting changes in how individuals manage and share their contents. The Internet has been primarily a client-server-based system, where it is challenging to keep contents up-to-date and consistent among all of the devices. Furthermore, the client-server model has service limitations in heterogeneous computing environments. However, a new peer-to-peer (P2P) model has emerged. In this P2P workplace, each participant (peer) acts as both client and content provider. Compared with services performed by the client-server model, P2P-based content management services have several advantages. In P2P environments, users can manage heterogeneous information resources residing in various platforms perhaps in different policy environments. A P2P-based content management model can provide higher resource availability due to the distributed nature of P2P computing. However, wide-scale application of P2P computing is constrained by limitations associated with the especially sophisticated control mechanisms needed between peers: most current P2P technologies simply focus on sharing services rather than on controls between the peers. In this paper, we introduce a middleware approach to support the underlying mechanisms, providing secure, automatic, interoperable, and transparent (SAINT) services for P2P content management. The underlying mechanisms are based on machine-understandable metadata. Our middleware approach using metadata facilitates the SAINT content management services with rich metadata expression in P2P computing environments. The broad dissemination of our approach allows the application of P2P technology to more reliable and efficient content services within organization or inter-organizations.
45167088
Moving Object Inference Engine and Applying to Battlefield
5714667
Extending software communications architecture for QoS support in SDR signal processing
The software communications architecture (SCA) is middleware for providing component interfaces and dynamic reconfigurability to software define radio (SDR) modems and it is widely adopted by the SDR forum. Although its main application domains include real-time signal processing, SCA lacks QoS support. We thus propose a QoS-enabled extension of SCA called Q-SCA. Our extended architecture incorporates a new waveform model, extended domain profiles that describe QoS requirements, and a modified application instantiation process that supports both admission control and resource allocation. We show the viability of Q-SCA through full implementation and experiments.
41933588
Trusted Component Sharing by Runtime Test and Immunization for Survivable Distributed Systems
As information systems became ever more complex and the interdependence of these systems increase, the survivability picture became more and more complicated. The need for survivability is most pressing for mission-critical systems, especially when they are integrated with other COTS products or services. When components are exported from a remote system to a local system under different administration and deployed in different environments, we cannot guarantee the proper execution of those remote components in the currently working environment. Therefore, in the runtime, we should consider the component failures (in particular, remote components) that may either occur genuinely due to poor implementation or the failures that occurred during the integration with other components in the system. In this paper, we introduce a generic architecture and mechanisms for dynamic component-failure detection and immunization for survivable distributed systems. We have also developed a prototype system based on our approaches as a proof of our ideas.