Threat Model for Grid Security Services

Abstract

The grid computing paradigm involves both the availability of abundant computing resources, and the storage of increased amounts of valuable data. Such information systems heavily rely upon the provision of adequate security. It is imperative that techniques be developed to assure the trustworthiness of these environments. Formal verification provides the tools and techniques to assess whether systems are indeed trustworthy, and is an established approach for security assurance. When using formal verification for security assessment one of the most important concerns should be to be precise about the threat model. A comprehensive threat model is indispensable for the simulations of a grid security model. This article presents a survey of the various threat models and discusses how and when these threat models may be inappropriate for use in the grid computing environments. Then a fine-grained threat model for grid computing is presented.

This research is supported by the European Commission funded project SEINIT (Security Expert Initiative) under reference number IST-2002-001929-SEINIT. The overall objective of the SEINIT project is to ensure a trusted security framework for ubiquitous environments, working across multiple devices and heterogeneous networks, in a way that is organization independent (inter-operable) and centered around an end-user. Project webpage is located at www.seinit.org.