Automatic Generation of Smart, Security-Aware GUI Models

Abstract

In many software applications, users access application data using graphical user interfaces (GUIs). There is an important, but little explored, link between visualization and security: when the application data is protected by an access control policy, the GUI should be aware of this and respect the policy. For example, the GUI should not display options to users for actions that they are not authorized to execute on application data. Taking this idea one step further, the application GUI should not just be security-aware, it should also be smart. For example, the GUI should not display options to users for opening other widgets when these widgets will only display options for actions that the users are not authorized to execute on application data. We establish this link between visualization and security using a model-driven development approach. Namely, we define and implement a many-models-to-model transformation that, given a security-design model and a GUI model, makes the GUI model both security-aware and smart.

Towards model-driven development of access control policies for web applications

“…Conversely to UWE, the resulting diagrams are overloaded as subjects like users are not modeled separately. ActionGUI [1] is a MDD approach that uses SecureUML and ComponentUML to model access control rules, and a GUI model enriched with OCL constraints.…”

SSG

“…In [1] we propose a model-based approach to linking visualization and security. The key idea is that this link is ultimately defined in terms of data actions, since data actions are both controlled by the security policy and triggered by the events supported by the graphical user interface.…”

“…This editor supports a language, named GUI [1,3], for modeling the behavioral properties of GUIs, namely what are the actions associated to the different events that are supported by the GUI. In a nutshell, this language can be used to model GUIs that con-sist of widgets (buttons, entries, labels) that are displayed inside containers (windows, combo-boxes), which are themselves widgets.…”

Model-Driven Development of Security-Aware GUIs for Data-Centric Applications

“…The backbone of this approach, illustrated in Figure 1, is a model transformation that automatically lifts the access control policy modeled at the level of the data to the level of the GUI [2]. More precisely, given a security model (specifying the access control policy on the application data) and a GUI model (specifying the actions triggered by the events supported by the GUI's widgets), our model transformation generates a GUI model that is security-aware.…”