2016/02/11 by Silvia Ghilezan, Svetlana Jakšić, Jovanka Pantović +2
Computer Science · #cs.LO #cs.PL
paper · pdf · doi:10.4204/eptcs.203.6
published as EPTCS 203, 2016, pp. 73-84 · In Proceedings PLACES 2015, arXiv:1602.03254
arxiv created 2016/02/11 · arxiv updated 2016/02/12
Security requirements in distributed software systems are inherently dynamic. In the case of authorization policies, resources are meant to be accessed only by authorized parties, but the authorization to access a resource may be dynamically granted/yielded. We describe ongoing work on a model for specifying communication and dynamic authorization handling. We build upon the pi-calculus so as to enrich communication-based systems with authorization specification and delegation; here authorizations regard channel usage and delegation refers to the act of yielding an authorization to another party. Our model includes: (i) a novel scoping construct for authorization, which allows to specify authorization boundaries, and (ii) communication primitives for authorizations, which allow to pass around authorizations to act on a given channel. An authorization error may consist in, e.g., performing an action along a name which is not under an appropriate authorization scope. We introduce a typing discipline that ensures that processes never reduce to authorization errors, even when authorizations are dynamically delegated.