Graphical Representation of Authorization Policies for Weighted Credentials

Abstract

Abstract. This paper elaborates on a solution to represent authorization and delegation in a graphical way, allowing users to better interpret delegation relationships. We make use of Weighted Trust Graph (WTG) as an instrument to represent delegation and authorization, extending it to cope with more complicated concepts, and providing a graphical representation of the level of confidence that exists between two entities regarding a resource or attribute. We represent the level of confidence for each pair of entities as a point in an axis diagram, as a set of points, or as a set of triangular regions depending on the accuracy we need. Then, we use the same diagram to represent the set of acceptable confidence level, that we call authorization policy set. In this way, a single diagram can be used to decide about authorization, thus providing a powerful tool for systems in which interaction of users is needed.

Implementation Aspects of a Delegation System

“…The experimental results prove that using goal oriented algorithm is more efficient because the corresponding authorization predicate is inferred in fewer inference steps and less time. A formal proof for the algorithm is outside the scope of this work, in [6,5] there is more information on the described algorithms. This work complements WTG by allowing designers and security administrators to check if the defined certificates reflect the desired behavior of the system, before distributing the certificates.…”