DAC vs. MAC Bell-Lapadula model • Most people familiar with discretionary access • View the system as subjects accessing objects control (DAC) - The system input is requests, the output is decisions - Unix permission bits are an example - Objects can be organized in one or more hierarchies, H - Might set a file private so only group friends can read it (a tree enforcing the type of decendents) • Discretionary means anyone with access can • Four modes of access are possible: propagate information: - execute – no observation or alteration - Mail
[email protected] < private - read – observation • Mandatory access control - append – alteration - Security administrator can restrict propagation - write – both observation and modification - Abbreviated MAC (NOT to be confused w. Message • The current access set, b, is (subj, obj, attr) tripples Authentication Code or Medium Access Control) • An access matrix M encodes permissible access types (as before, subjects are rows, objects columns) 1/36 2/36 Security levels Security properties • A security level is a (c, s) pair: • The simple security or ss-property: - c = classification – E.g., unclassified, secret, top secret - For any (S, O, A) ∈ b, if A includes observation, then level(S) - s = category-set – E.g., Nuclear, Crypto must dominate level(O) - E.g., an unclassified user cannot read a top-secret document • (c1, s1) dominates (c2, s2) iff c1 ≥ c2 and s2 ⊆ s1 • The star security or : - L1 dominates L2 sometimes written L1 ⊒ L2 or L2 ⊑ L1 *-property - levels then form a lattice (partial order w.