Abstract
The access-control authorization scheme, which is being used for the protection of operating systems, is found to be inadequate in other areas, such as in databases and information systems. A new authorization scheme, which is a natural extension of access control, is proposed. The new scheme, which is called “operation control,” is shown to be superior to the accesscontrol scheme in a number of ways. In particular, it facilitates more natural and efficient representations of policies, particularly the type of complex policies that appear in information systems, it facilitates enforcement by compile-time validation due to a greater stability of authority states, and it reduces the need for revocation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
E. Cohen and D. Jefferson, “Protection in the Hydra Operating System,” inProceedings of the Fifth Symposium on Operational System Principles (November, 1975).
O. J. Dahl and C. A. R. Hoare, “Hierarchical Program Structures,” inStructured Programming, Dahl, Dijkstra, and Hoare, eds. (New York, Academic Press, 1972).
G. S. Graham and P. J. Denning, “Protection-Principle and Practice,” inProceedings of the 1972 SJCC (AFIPS Press, 1972).
M. H. Harrison,et al., “On Protection in Operating Systems,”Proceedings of the Fifth Annual SIGOPS Conference (1975).
A. K. Jones and W. A. Wulf, “Towards the design of secure systems,”Software Pract. Exper. 321–336 (1975).
A. K. Jones and B. Liskov, “An Access Control Facility for Programming Languages,” Technical Report, Carnegie Mellon University (1976).
B. Lampson, “Protection,” inProceedings of the Fifth Princeton Symposium on Information Science and Systems (March 1971), pp. 437–443.
B. Lampson and S. Sturgis, “Reflections on an operating-system design,”Commun. ACM (May, 1976).
T. A. Linden, “Operating system structures to support security and reliable software,”Sum. ACM, to be published.
B. Liskov and S. Zilles, “Programming with abstract data types,”SIGPLAN Not. (April, 1974).
N. Minsky, “Intentional resolution of privacy protection in database systems,”Commun. ACM (March, 1976).
N. Minsky, “An Activator-Based Protection Scheme,” Rutgers Technical Report (July, 1976).
M. Rosenblit and N. Minsky, “On the Decidability Problem of the Safety of Protection Systems,” Rutgers University Technical Report (February, 1976).
G. Popek and C. S. Kline, “Verifiable Secure Operating System Software” [AFIPS (1974NCC), 145–151],Proceedings of the 1974 NCC (AFIPS Press, 1972), pp. 145–151.
D. Redell, “Naming and Protection in Extendible Operating Systems,” Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley (1974).
J. H. Saltzer and M. D. Schroeder, “The protection of information in computer systems,”Proc. IEEE 63(9) (September, 1975).
C. Weissman, “Security controls in the ADEPT-50 time-sharing system,” in1969 AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Vol. 35, pp. 119–133.
W. Wulf, “HYDRA: The kernel of a multiprocessor operating system,”Commun. ACM 17:337–345 (June, 1974).
W. A. Wulf, “ALPHARD: Towards a Language to Support Structured Programs,” CMU Technical Report (April, 1974).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This work was partially supported by Grant DAHCIS-73-G6 of the Advanced Research Project Agency of the US government. This paper is a modified version of the paper “An Activator-based protection scheme,” July 1976 (SOSAP-TR-25).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Minsky, N. An operation-control scheme for authorization in computer systems. International Journal of Computer and Information Sciences 7, 157–191 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00975884
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00975884