Nexus authorization logic (NAL)

Abstract

Nexus Authorization Logic (NAL) provides a principled basis for specifying and reasoning about credentials and authorization policies. It extends prior access control logics that are based on “says” and “speaks for” operators. NAL enables authorization of access requests to depend on (i) the source or pedigree of the requester, (ii) the outcome of any mechanized analysis of the requester, or (iii) the use of trusted software to encapsulate or modify the requester. To illustrate the convenience and expressive power of this approach to authorization, a suite of document-viewer applications was implemented to run on the Nexus operating system. One of the viewers enforces policies that concern the integrity of excerpts that a document contains; another viewer enforces confidentiality policies specified by labels tagging blocks of text.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 01, 2011
Source ID
10.1145/1952982.1952990

Entities

People

  • Emin Gun Sirer
  • Fred B. Schneider
  • Kevin Walsh

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • Air Force Research Laboratory
  • Cornell University
  • Division of Computing and Communication Foundations
  • National Science Foundation
  • Office of Naval Research

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Database Systems and Applications