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Automatic Conformance Checking of Role-Based Access Control Policies via Alloy

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Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSoS 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 6542))

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Abstract

Access control policies are a crucial aspect of many security-critical software systems. It is generally accepted that the construction of access control policies is not a straightforward task. Further, any mistakes in the process have the potential to give rise both to security risks, due to the provision of inappropriate access, and to frustration on behalf of legitimate end-users when they are prevented from performing essential tasks. In this paper we describe a tool for constructing role-based access control (RBAC) policies, which are automatically checked for conformance with constraints described using predicate logic. These constraints may represent general healthiness conditions that should hold of all policies conforming to a general model, or capture requirements pertaining to a particular deployment.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computing Laboratory, Oxford University, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QD, United Kingdom

    David Power, Mark Slaymaker & Andrew Simpson

Authors
  1. David Power
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  2. Mark Slaymaker
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  3. Andrew Simpson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Google Inc., 1288 Pear Ave, 94043, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Úlfar Erlingsson

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, 7522 NB, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Roel Wieringa

  3. Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, Den Dolech 2, 5612 AZ, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Nicola Zannone

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Power, D., Slaymaker, M., Simpson, A. (2011). Automatic Conformance Checking of Role-Based Access Control Policies via Alloy. In: Erlingsson, Ú., Wieringa, R., Zannone, N. (eds) Engineering Secure Software and Systems. ESSoS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6542. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19125-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19125-1_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19124-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19125-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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