Secured Information Flow for Asynchronous Sequential Processes

Isabelle Attali (1) , Denis Caromel (1) , Ludovic Henrio (2) , Felipe Luna (1)

1 OASIS - Active objects, semantics, Internet and security
2 UOW - University of Westminster [London]

We present in this article a precise security model for data confidentiality in the framework of ASP (Asynchronous Sequential Processes). ASP is based on active objects, asynchronous communications, and data-flow synchronizations. We extend it with security levels attached to activities (active objects) and transmitted data. We design a security model that guarantees data confidentiality within an application; this security model takes advantages of both mandatory and discretionary access models. We extend the semantics of ASP with predicate conditions that provide a formal security framework, dynamically checking for unauthorized information flows. As a final result, all authorized communication paths are secure: no disclosure of information can happen. This theoretically-founded contribution may have a strong impact on distributed object-based applications, that are more and more present and confidentiality-demanding on the Internet, it also arises a new issue in data confidentiality: authorization of secured information flow transiting (by the mean of futures) through an unsecured Component.

Domaines: Calcul parallèle, distribué et partagé [cs.DC]

Isabelle Attali, Denis Caromel, Ludovic Henrio, Felipe Luna. Secured Information Flow for Asynchronous Sequential Processes. 3rd International Workshop on Security Issues in Concurrency (SecCo'05), Aug 2005, San Francisco, USA. ⟨inria-00122937⟩