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

Abstract

Abstract. The Java Micro Edition platform (JME), a Java enabled technology, provides the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) standard that facilitates applications development and specifies a security model for the controlled access to sensitive resources of the device. The model builds upon the notion of protection domain, which in turn can be grasped as a set of permissions. An alternative model has been proposed that extends MIDP's by introducing permissions with multiplicities and adding flexibility to the way in which permissions are granted by the user of the device and used by the applications running on it. This paper presents a framework, formalized using the proof-assistant Coq, suitable for defining and comparing the access control policies that can be enforced by (variants of) those security models and to prove desirable properties they should satisfy. The proofs of some of those properties are also stated and discussed in this work.

Formal Analysis of Security Models for Mobile Devices, Virtualization Platforms, and Domain Name Systems

“…This section builds upon a number of previously published papers [62,63,64,65]. The rest of the section is organized as follows: Section 2.1 presents the MIDP security model; Section 2.2 overviews the formalization of the MIDP 2.0 security model, presents some of its verified properties, and proposes a methodology to refine the specification and obtain an executable prototype.…”

“…In [29], a security model for interactive mobile devices is put forward which can be grasped as an extension of that of MIDP. The work presented in this section, based on [65,1], has focused on developing a formal model for studying, in particular, interactive user querying mechanisms for permission granting for application execution on mobile devices. Like in the MIDP case, the notion of permission is central to this model.…”

“…One of the objectives of the work reported in [65,1], 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 [29] (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 CIC, adopts, with variations, most of the security and programming constructions defined in [29].…”

“…Besson, Duffay and Jensen [29,78] have put forward an alternative access control model for mobile devices that generalizes the MIDP model by introducing permissions with multiplicites, extending the way permissions are granted by users and consumed by applications. One of the main outcomes of the work we report in the present paper, based on [65,1], is a general framework that sets up the basis for defining, analyzing and comparing access control models for mobile devices. In particular, this framework subsumes the security model of MIDP and several variations, including the model defined in [29,78].…”