A Formal Model of Access Control for Mobile Interactive Devices

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents an access control model for programming applications in which the access control to resources can employ user interaction to obtain the necessary permissions. This model is inspired by and improves on the Java MIDP security architecture used in Java-enabled mobile telephones. We consider access control permissions with multiplicities in order to allow to use a permission a certain number of times. An operational semantics of the model and a formal definition of what it means for an application to respect the security model is given. A static analysis which enforces the security model is defined and proved correct. A constraint solving algorithm implementing the analysis is presented.

A Framework for the Analysis of Access Control Models for Interactive Mobile Devices

“…One of the main objectives of the work that is being reported here, has been to build a framework which would provide a formal setting to define the permission models defined by MIDP and the one presented in [2] (and variants of it) in an uniform way and to perform a formal analysis and comparison of those models. This framework, which is formally defined using the Calculus of Inductive Constructions [4,5], adopts, with variations, most of the security and programming constructions defined in [2].…”

“…This framework, which is formally defined using the Calculus of Inductive Constructions [4,5], adopts, with variations, most of the security and programming constructions defined in [2]. In particular it has been modified so as to be parameterized by permission granting policies, while in the original work this relation is fixed.…”

“…In [2], a security model for interactive mobile devices is put forward which can be grasped as an extension of the JME-MIDP model. The work presented in that paper has focused in developing a formal model for studying, in particular, interactive user querying mechanisms for permission granting for application execution on mobile devices.…”

“…The principal difference is that most of those constructions are now parameterized by a permission grant policy. In this paper it is shown how the framework can be used to define a type of permission grant policies and to represent the four user permission modes of MIDP and the policies defined in [2] as objects of that type. The paper also presents the definition of an order relation, based on a notion of safe programs, which can be used to perform a comparative analysis of grant policies.…”

MOBIUS: Mobility, Ubiquity, Security

“…Resource security may be assured either by runtime checks, or a type system for resource accounting, such that any well-typed program will only attempt to use resources for which it already has authorisation. We have also used abstract interpretation to model such external resources [10]. From a program control-flow graph, we infer constraints in a lattice of permissions: whenever some resourceful action takes place, the program must have acquired at least the permissions required.…”