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International School on Foundations of Security Analysis and Design

International School on Foundations of Security Analysis and Design

FOSAD 2016, FOSAD 2015: Foundations of Security Analysis and Design VIII pp 139–162Cite as

Distributed Authorization in Vanadium

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 9808))

Abstract

In this tutorial, we present an authorization model for distributed systems that operate with limited internet connectivity. Reliable internet access remains a luxury for a majority of the world’s population. Even for those who can afford it, a dependence on internet connectivity may lead to sub-optimal user experiences. With a focus on decentralized deployment, we present an authorization model that is suitable for scenarios where devices right next to each other (such as a sensor or a friend’s phone) should be able to communicate securely in a peer-to-peer manner. The model has been deployed as part of an open-source distributed application framework called Vanadium. As part of this tutorial, we survey some of the key ideas and techniques used in distributed authorization, and explain how they are combined in the design of our model.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some systems choose to distinguish the concepts of “sharing” an “delegation” with the former being a mechanism for a principal to allow another principal to access an object while the latter being a mechanism for allowing another principal to act on its behalf. In this tutorial, we do not make this distinction, and treat “delegation” more broadly as a mechanism for one principal to delegate some of its authority to another principal.

  2. 2.

    An alternative is for each resource owner to become a credential issuer but that leads to a proliferation of credentials at the requester’s end.

  3. 3.

    For ease of discussion, we refer to users and devices as principals; strictly speaking, we are referring to processes controlled by them.

  4. 4.

    The model described in [8] is more general and allows multiple \(\mathtt{Allow}\) and \(\mathtt{Deny}\) clauses in ACLs.

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Acknowledgments

This work is a result of a joint effort by several members of the Vanadium team at Google. We would like to thank Martín Abadi, Mike Burrows, Ryan Brown, Bogdan Caprita, Thai Duong, Cosmos Nicolaou, Himabindu Pucha, David Presotto, Adam Sadovsky, Suharsh Sivakumar, Gautham Thambidorai, Robin Thellend for their contributions to designing and implementing the Vanadium authorization model. We are grateful to Martín Abadi and Mike Burrows for helpful comments on drafts of this tutorial.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Google Inc., Mountain View, USA

    Ankur Taly & Asim Shankar

Authors
  1. Ankur Taly
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  2. Asim Shankar
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Correspondence to Ankur Taly .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Urbino , Urbino, Italy

    Alessandro Aldini

  2. University of Malaga , Malaga, Spain

    Javier Lopez

  3. National Research Council C.N.R. , Pisa, Italy

    Fabio Martinelli

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Taly, A., Shankar, A. (2016). Distributed Authorization in Vanadium. In: Aldini, A., Lopez, J., Martinelli, F. (eds) Foundations of Security Analysis and Design VIII. FOSAD FOSAD 2016 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9808. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43005-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43005-8_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43004-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43005-8

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