Context-driven policy enforcement and reconciliation for Web services

Security of Web services is a major factor to their successful integration into critical IT applications. An extensive research in this direction concentrates on low level aspects of security such as message secrecy, data integrity, and authentication. Thus, proposed solutions are mainly built upon the assumption that security mechanisms are static and predefined. However, the dynamic nature of the Internet and the continuously changing environments where Web services operate require innovative and adaptive security solutions. This paper presents our solution for securing Web services based on adaptive policies, where adaptability is satisfied using the contextual information of the Web services. The proposed solution includes a negotiation and reconciliation protocol for security policies

XML Rewriting Attacks: Existing Solutions and their Limitations

Web Services are web-based applications made available for web users or remote Web-based programs. In order to promote interoperability, they publish their interfaces in the so-called WSDL file and allow remote call over the network. Although Web Services can be used in different ways, the industry standard is the Service Oriented Architecture Web Services that doesn't rely on the implementation details. In this architecture, communication is performed through XML-based messages called SOAP messages. However, those messages are prone to attacks that can lead to code injection, unauthorized accesses, identity theft, etc. This type of attacks, called XML Rewriting Attacks, are all based on unauthorized, yet possible, modifications of SOAP messages. We present in this paper an explanation of this kind of attack, review the existing solutions, and show their limitations. We also propose some ideas to secure SOAP messages, as well as implementation ideas

My private cloud--granting federated access to cloud resources

We describe the research undertaken in the six month JISC/EPSRC funded My Private Cloud project, in which we built a demonstration cloud file storage service that allows users to login to it, by using their existing credentials from a configured trusted identity provider. Once authenticated, users are shown a set of accounts that they are the owners of, based on their identity attributes. Once users open one of their accounts, they can upload and download files to it. Not only that, but they can then grant access to their file resources to anyone else in the federated system, regardless of whether their chosen delegate has used the cloud service before or not. The system uses standard identity management protocols, attribute based access controls, and a delegation service. A set of APIs have been defined for the authentication, authorisation and delegation processes, and the software has been released as open source to the community. A public demonstration of the system is available online

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IT Students Win Big in the College Research Symposiu

Obligations of trust for privacy and confidentiality in distributed transactions

Purpose – This paper aims to describe a bilateral symmetric approach to authorization, privacy protection and obligation enforcement in distributed transactions. The authors introduce the concept of the obligation of trust (OoT) protocol as a privacy assurance and authorization mechanism that is built upon the XACML standard. The OoT allows two communicating parties to dynamically exchange their privacy and authorization requirements and capabilities, which the authors term a notification of obligation (NoB), as well as their commitments to fulfilling each other's requirements, which the authors term signed acceptance of obligations (SAO). The authors seek to describe some applicability of these concepts and to show how they can be integrated into distributed authorization systems for stricter privacy and confidentiality control. Design/methodology/approach – Existing access control and privacy protection systems are typically unilateral and provider-centric, in that the enterprise service provider assigns the access rights, makes the access control decisions, and determines the privacy policy. There is no negotiation between the client and the service provider about which access control or privacy policy to use. The authors adopt a symmetric, more user-centric approach to privacy protection and authorization, which treats the client and service provider as peers, in which both can stipulate their requirements and capabilities, and hence negotiate terms which are equally acceptable to both parties. Findings – The authors demonstrate how the obligation of trust protocol can be used in a number of different scenarios to improve upon the mechanisms that are currently available today. Practical implications – This approach will serve to increase trust in distributed transactions since each communicating party receives a difficult to repudiate digitally signed acceptance of obligations, in a standard language (XACML), which can be automatically enforced by their respective computing machinery. Originality/value – The paper adds to current research in trust negotiation, privacy protection and authorization by combining all three together into one set of standardized protocols. Furthermore, by providing hard to repudiate signed acceptance of obligations messages, this strengthens the legal case of the injured party should a dispute arise