Secure Coding mailing list archives
Re: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions
From: Glenn and Mary Everhart <Everhart () gce com>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 15:52:55 +0000
William Herrera wrote: I think some here might have suggestions about improvements to existing ACL's. I'm working on an extensible access-control-list style authorization system, beyond the usual read/write authorization schemes, probably to be written as a Perl module for CGI use and using a database on the back end. This is designed to allow fine control over the use of data and other objects by a given user. Right now it mainly uses read/append/edit/delete modes, since in its present alpha form it has a well defined groupware use, but I intend to make it more flexible than that, generic enough to be used as a general-purpose open source perl object authorization module. In doing so, I'd like to define modes of access beyond the ones allowed by Unix and Windows ACL's. These, so far, include: list object (see the object in a ls or dir listing) read or view object append (simple data) to object add link (to another object) within the object edit (change existing object's data or structure) delete object undelete or roll back object to a prior state administer (change object's authorizations or modes) ownership (to be the creator of the object or equivalent) Does anyone know of an access control type they've wanted in an access control list but not had? How about access by a process with too much privilege? Also it would be handy to be able to control access in some ways directly by integrity level. Initially it is I think sufficient to be able to hand designate low integrity programs, but there needs to be a system to propagate this state to objects that have been accessed by, or perhaps altered by, a low integrity program. I worked up some code that implemented such a number of years back, but have not experimented in the area for some time. The point of this is to deal with mobile code where the mobile code really should not be treated as acting as a human user's agent. It is probably worth mentioning that some of the old MLS operating systems that were too slow back in the, say, late 70s, may be just fine now, with machines that run ~1000 times faster, and getting faster still. What was a little too slow to use on a pdp11 would probably look blazingly fast on most any contemporary processor. Same might be true for good old Multics if it can be compiled on newer iron. (I didn't get close enough to it to know what it was written in. Maybe someone will comment.)
Current thread:
- ACL (access control lists) generic design questions William Herrera (Feb 26)
- Re: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions Richard Moore (Feb 26)
- Re: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions Glenn and Mary Everhart (Feb 27)
- RE: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions Bill Eddins (Feb 27)
- RE: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions (oh, and Reply-To) Kim Gräsman (Mar 01)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions Shea, Brian A (Feb 26)
- Re: ACL (access control lists) generic design questions Peter G. Neumann (Feb 26)