Automated Verification of Access Control Policies

Abstract

Managing access control policies in modern computer systems can be challenging and error-prone, especially when multiple access policies are combined to form new policies, possibly introducing unintended consequences. In this paper we present a framework for automated verification of access control policies. We introduce a formal model for systematically specifying access to resources. We show that the access control policies in the XACML access control language can be translated to a simple form which partitions the input domain to four classes: permit, deny, error, and notapplicable. We present several ordering relations for access control policies which can be used to specify the properties of the policies and the relationships among them. We then show how to automatically check these ordering relations using an existing automated analysis tool. In particular, we translate XACML policies to the Alloy language and check their properties using the Alloy Analyzer. Our experimental results demonstrate that automated verification of XACML policies is feasible.