Building secure embedded kernels with the Think architecture.

We present in this paper the security features of Think, an object-oriented architecture dedicated to build customized operating system kernels. The Think architecture is composed of an object-oriented software framework including a trader, and a library of system abstractions programmed as components. We show how to use this architecture to build secure and efficient kernels for embedded systems. Policy- neutral security is achieved by providing elementary tools that can be used by the system programmer to build a system resistant to denial of service attacks and incorporating data access control. An example of such a secure system is given by detailing how to ensure component isolation with a elementary software-based memory isolation tool

An Enhancement Role and Attribute Based Access Control Mechanism in Big Data

To be able to leverage big data to achieve enhanced strategic insight and make informed decision, an efficient access control mechanism is needed for ensuring end to end security of such information asset. Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC), Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and Event Based Access Control (EBAC) are widely used access control mechanisms. The ABAC system is much more complex in terms of policy reviews, hence analyzing the policy and reviewing or changing user permission are quite complex task. RBAC system is labor intensive and time consuming to build a model instance and it lacks flexibility to efficiently adapt to changing user’s, objects and security policies. EBAC model considered only the events to allocate access controls. Yet these mechanisms have limitations and offer feature complimentary to each other. So in this paper, Event-Role-Attribute based fine grained Access Control mechanism is proposed, it provide a flexible boundary which effectively adapt to changing user’s, objects and security policies based on the event. The flexible boundary is achieved by using temporal and environment state of an event. It improves the big data security and overcomes the disadvantages of the ABAC and RBAC mechanisms. The experiments are conducted to prove the effectiveness of the proposed Event-Role-Attribute based Access Control mechanism over ABAC and RBAC in terms of computational overhead

A Distributed Calculus for Role-Based Access Control

Role-based access control (RBAC) is increasingly attracting attention because it reduces the complexity and cost of security administration by interposing the notion of role in the assignment of permissions to users. In this paper, we present a formal framework relying on an extension of the π calculus to study the behavior of concurrent systems in a RBAC scenario. We define a type system ensuring that the specified policy is respected during computations, and a bisimulation to equate systems. The theory is then applied to three meaningful examples, namely finding the ‘minimal’ policy to run a given system, refining a system to be run under a given policy (whenever possible), and minimizing the number of users in a given system without changing the overall behavior

A SEMANTIC BASED POLICY MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENTS

Cloud computing paradigm has gained tremendous momentum and generated intensive interest. Although security issues are delaying its fast adoption, cloud computing is an unstoppable force and we need to provide security mechanisms to ensure its secure adoption. In this dissertation, we mainly focus on issues related to policy management and access control in the cloud. Currently, users have to use diverse access control mechanisms to protect their data when stored on the cloud service providers (CSPs). Access control policies may be specified in different policy languages and heterogeneity of access policies pose significant problems.An ideal policy management system should be able to work with all data regardless of where they are stored. Semantic Web technologies when used for policy management, can help address the crucial issues of interoperability of heterogeneous CSPs. In this dissertation, we propose a semantic based policy management framework for cloud computing environments which consists of two main components, namely policy management and specification component and policy evolution component. In the policy management and specification component, we first introduce policy management as a service (PMaaS), a cloud based policy management framework that give cloud users a unified control point for specifying authorization policies, regardless of where the data is stored. Then, we present semantic based policy management framework which enables users to specify access control policies using semantic web technologies and helps address heterogeneity issues of cloud computing environments. We also model temporal constraints and restrictions in GTRBAC using OWL and show how ontologies can be used to specify temporal constraints. We present a proof of concept implementation of the proposed framework and provide some performance evaluation. In the policy evolution component, we propose to use role mining techniques to deal with policy evolution issues and present StateMiner, a heuristic algorithm to find an RBAC state as close as possible to both the deployed RBAC state and the optimal state. We also implement the proposed algorithm and perform some experiments to demonstrate its effectiveness

A Dynamic Access Control Model Using Authorising Workfow and Task Role-based Access Control

Access control is fundamental and prerequisite to govern and safeguard information assets within an organisation. Organisations generally use Web enabled remote access coupled with applications access distributed across various networks. These networks face various challenges including increase operational burden and monitoring issues due to the dynamic and complex nature of security policies for access control. The increasingly dynamic nature of collaborations means that in one context a user should have access to sensitive information, whilst not being allowed access in other contexts. The current access control models are static and lack Dynamic Segregation of Duties (SoD), Task instance level of Segregation, and decision making in real time. This thesis addresses these limitations describes tools to support access management in borderless network environments with dynamic SoD capability and real time access control decision making and policy enforcement. This thesis makes three contributions: i) Defining an Authorising Workflow Task Role Based Access Control (AW-TRBAC) using existing task and workflow concepts. This new workflow integrates dynamic SoD, whilst considering task instance restriction to ensure overall access governance and accountability. It enhances existing access control models such as Role Based Access Control (RBAC) by dynamically granting users access rights and providing access governance. ii) Extension of the OASIS standard of XACML policy language to support dynamic access control requirements and enforce access control rules for real time decision making. This mitigates risks relating to access control, such as escalation of privilege in broken access control, and insucient logging and monitoring. iii) The AW-TRBAC model is implemented by extending the open source XACML (Balana) policy engine to demonstrate its applicability to a real industrial use case from a financial institution. The results show that AW-TRBAC is scalable, can process relatively large numbers of complex requests, and meets the requirements of real time access control decision making, governance and mitigating broken access control risk

Building secure embedded kernels with the Think architecture.

We present in this paper the security features of Think, an object-oriented architecture dedicated to build customized operating system kernels. The Think architecture is composed of an object-oriented software framework including a trader, and a library of system abstractions programmed as components. We show how to use this architecture to build secure and efficient kernels for embedded systems. Policy- neutral security is achieved by providing elementary tools that can be used by the system programmer to build a system resistant to denial of service attacks and incorporating data access control. An example of such a secure system is given by detailing how to ensure component isolation with a elementary software-based memory isolation tool

Access control model for WebServices eGovernment infrastructure.

Tam Ka Wing Matthew.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-89).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Acknowledgement --- p.iAbstract --- p.iTable of Contents --- p.iiiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 2 --- eGovernment Requirements --- p.5Chapter 2.1 --- Efficient Operation --- p.5Chapter 2.2 --- Citizen-centric Government --- p.7Chapter 2.3 --- Security --- p.10Chapter 2.3.1 --- Confidentiality --- p.10Chapter 2.3.2 --- Integrity --- p.12Chapter 2.3.3 --- Availability --- p.12Chapter 2.4 --- Support of eBusiness --- p.13Chapter 3 --- Webservices for e-Government - A Marriage for Interoperability --- p.15Chapter 4 --- A Webservices Based eGovernment Framework --- p.17Chapter 4.1 --- System Component Model --- p.17Chapter 4.2 --- System Access Model --- p.18Chapter 4.3 --- Security Model --- p.20Chapter 4.3.1 --- Access Right Model --- p.20Chapter 4.3.2 --- Authentication Model --- p.22Chapter 4.4 --- Transaction Model --- p.23Chapter 5 --- eGovernment WebServices Access Control --- p.25Chapter 5.1 --- eGovernment WebService --- p.25Chapter 5.2 --- Request of Access --- p.27Chapter 5.3 --- eGovernment Access Policy --- p.30Chapter 5.3.1 --- Administration Based Policy --- p.32Chapter 5.3.2 --- Legislation Based Policy --- p.33Chapter 6 --- Research in Access Control --- p.38Chapter 6.1 --- Traditional Model --- p.38Chapter 6.2 --- More Advanced Models --- p.39Chapter 6.2.1 --- Role-Based Access Control Model --- p.39Chapter 6.2.2 --- Task-Based Authorisation Control Models --- p.41Chapter 6.2.3 --- Digital Library Authorisation Model --- p.42Chapter 6.3 --- Recent Works --- p.44Chapter 6.4 --- Limitations of the Models --- p.45Chapter 7 --- Proposed Approach --- p.47Chapter 7.1 --- WebService Specific Access Control --- p.48Chapter 7.1.1 --- WebService Access Rules --- p.48Chapter 7.1.2 --- Authorisation Conflict Resolution --- p.50Chapter 7.2 --- Subject Based Access Control --- p.52Chapter 7.2.1 --- Subject Category --- p.52Chapter 7.2.2 --- Subject Access Rules --- p.53Chapter 7.2.3 --- WebService Registration --- p.55Chapter 7.2.4 --- Authorisation Conflict Resolution --- p.56Chapter 7.3 --- The WebServices --- p.57Chapter 7.4 --- Combining Two Level Access Control --- p.57Chapter 7.5 --- Application to Chained WebService Request --- p.58Chapter 7.6 --- Comparison with the Existing Access Control Models --- p.59Chapter 8 --- An Implementation Reference Model --- p.60Chapter 8.1 --- Some Practical Issues --- p.60Chapter 8.1.1 --- Citizen Privacy --- p.60Chapter 8.1.2 --- Trust between eGovernment Systems --- p.61Chapter 8.1.3 --- Authentication --- p.62Chapter 8.2 --- System Architecture --- p.64Chapter 8.2.1 --- eGovernment WebServices Gateway --- p.65Chapter 8.2.2 --- Authentication Engine --- p.66Chapter 8.2.3 --- Access Control Database --- p.66Chapter 8.2.4 --- Access Control Decision Engine --- p.67Chapter 8.2.5 --- A Working Scenario --- p.67Chapter 8.3 --- Implementation --- p.69Chapter 9 --- Evaluation of the Proposed Mechanism --- p.74Chapter 9.1 --- Application Scenarios --- p.75Chapter 9.1.1 --- Citizen Level Access Right --- p.75Chapter 9.1.2 --- Access Means Based Authorisation --- p.76Chapter 9.1.3 --- Access Right Based on Combination of User and Consumer Identity --- p.77Chapter 9.1.4 --- Legislation Based Access Right --- p.78Chapter 9.1.5 --- Joined-up Government --- p.79Chapter 10 --- Conclusion and Future Directions --- p.81References --- p.8

Component isolation in the Think architecture.

We present in this paper the security features of Think, an ob ject-oriented architecture dedicated to build customized operating system kernels. The Think architecture is composed of an object- oriented software framework including a trader, and a library of system abstractions programmed as components. We show how to use this architecture to build secure and efficient kernels. Policy-neutral security is achieved by providing elementary tools that can be used by the system programmer to build a system resistant to security hazards, and a security manager that uses these tools to enforce a given security policy. An example of such a secure system is given by detailing how to ensure component isolation with a elementary software-based memory isolation tool

The flask security architecture: system support for diverse security policies

technical reportOperating systems must be flexible in their support for security policies, i.e., the operating system must provide sufficient mechanisms for supporting the wide variety of real-world security policies. Systems claiming to provide this support have failed to do so in two ways: they either fail to provide sufficient control over the propagation of access rights, or they fail to provide enforcement mechanisms to support fine-grained control and dynamic security policies. In this paper we present an operating systems security architecture that solves both of these problems. The first problem is solved by ensuring that the security policy (through a consistent replica) is consulted for every security decision. The second problem is solved through mechanisms that are directly integrated into the service-providing components of the system. The architecture is described through its prototype implementation in the Flask microkernel-based OS, and the policy flexibility of the prototype is evaluated. We present initial evidence that the architecture's performance impact is modest. Moreover, our architecture is applicable to many other types of operating systems and environments

EPA Pats Itself on the Back

The Environmental Protection Agency's report to Congress on the benefits and costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2010 is uninformative and unreliable. It considers no regulatory alternatives, overstates likely benefits and understates costs. Successive reviews under the auspices of EPA's Science Advisory Board and the Office of Management and Budget did not prevent these shortcomings. We recommend that Congress should ask for major reviews of regulatory programs only from entities that are independent of the agencies that administer the programs.Environment, Regulatory Reform