Computer Security:
Principles and Practice
Chapter 4 – Access Control
First Edition
by William Stallings and Lawrie Brown
Lecture slides by Lawrie Brown
Access Control
“The prevention of unauthorized use of a
resource, including the prevention of use
of a resource in an unauthorized manner“
central element of computer security
assume have users and groups
authenticate to system
assigned access rights to certain resources
on system
Access Control Principles
Access Control Policies
Access Control Requirements
reliable input
fine and coarse specifications
least privilege
separation of duty
open and closed policies
policy combinations, conflict resolution
administrative policies
Access Control Elements
subject - entity that can access objects
a process representing user/application
often have 3 classes: owner, group, world
object - access controlled resource
e.g. files, directories, records, programs etc
number/type depend on environment
access right - way in which subject
accesses an object
e.g. read, write, execute, delete, create, search
Discretionary Access Control
often provided using an access matrix
lists subjects in one dimension (rows)
lists objects in the other dimension (columns)
each entry specifies access rights of the
specified subject to that object
access matrix is often sparse
can decompose by either row or column
Access Control Structures
Access Control Model
Access
Control
Function
Protection Domains
set of objects with associated access rights
in access matrix view, each row defines a
protection domain
but not necessarily just a user
may be a limited subset of user’s rights
applied to a more restricted process
may be static or dynamic
UNIX File Concepts
UNIX files administered using inodes
control structure with key info on file
• attributes, permissions of a single file
may have several names for same inode
have inode table / list for all files on a disk
• copied to memory when disk mounted
directories form a hierarchical tree
may contain files or other directories
are a file of names and inode numbers
UNIX File Access Control
UNIX File Access Control
“set user ID”(SetUID) or “set group ID”(SetGID)
system temporarily uses rights of the file owner /
group in addition to the real user’s rights when making
access control decisions
enables privileged programs to access files /
resources not generally accessible
sticky bit
on directory limits rename/move/delete to owner
superuser
is exempt from usual access control restrictions
UNIX Access Control Lists
modern UNIX systems support ACLs
can specify any number of additional users /
groups and associated rwx permissions
ACLs are optional extensions to std perms
group perms also set max ACL perms
when access is required
select most appropriate ACL
• owner, named users, owning / named groups, others
check if have sufficient permissions for access
Role-
Based
Access
Control
Role-
Based
Access
Control
Role-
Based
Access
Control
NIST RBAC Model
RBAC For a Bank
Summary
introduced access control principles
subjects, objects, access rights
discretionary access controls
access matrix, access control lists (ACLs),
capability tickets
UNIX traditional and ACL mechanisms
role-based access control
case study
