Static checking of dynamically-varying security policies in database-backed applications
Name
UrFlowOSDI10.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
208.77 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1cddb2e7713380021ac7e374ce850b8b
Author(s)
Chlipala, Adam
Date Issued
October 2010
Journal
Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2010
Publisher
USENIX Association
Citation
Chlipala, Adam. “Static checking of dynamically-varying security policies in database-backed applications.” Paper in the Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2010, Vancouver, BC, October 4-6 2010, USENIX Association: 105–118 © 2010 The Author(s)
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We present a system for sound static checking of security policies for database-backed Web applications. Our tool checks a combination of access control and information flow policies, where the policies vary based on database contents. For instance, one or more database tables may represent an access control matrix, controlling who may read or write which cells of these and other tables. Using symbolic evaluation and automated theorem-proving, our tool checks these policies statically, requiring no program annotations (beyond the policies themselves) and adding no run-time overhead. Specifications come in the form of SQL queries as policies: for instance, an application's confidentiality policy is a fixed set of queries, whose results provide an upper bound on what information may be released to the user. To provide user-dependent policies, we allow queries to depend on what secrets the user knows. We have used our prototype implementation to check several programs representative of the data-centric Web applications that are common today.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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