Decomposing, Comparing, and Synthesizing Access Control Expressiveness Simulations (Extended Version)
This work addresses a foundational issue in computer security for researchers and practitioners by providing a unified framework to compare access control systems, though it is incremental in building on existing formal studies.
The paper tackles the problem of inconsistent and incomparable notions of expressiveness simulations in access control by defining a minimum set of properties for implementable simulations and a taxonomy to classify existing ones, showing that this framework can guide practical system choices.
Access control is fundamental to computer security, and has thus been the subject of extensive formal study. In particular, *relative expressiveness analysis* techniques have used formal mappings called *simulations* to explore whether one access control system is capable of emulating another, thereby comparing the expressive power of these systems. Unfortunately, the notions of expressiveness simulation that have been explored vary widely, which makes it difficult to compare results in the literature, and even leads to apparent contradictions between results. Furthermore, some notions of expressiveness simulation make use of non-determinism, and thus cannot be used to define mappings between access control systems that are useful in practical scenarios. In this work, we define the minimum set of properties for an *implementable* access control simulation; i.e., a deterministic "recipe" for using one system in place of another. We then define a wide range of properties spread across several dimensions that can be enforced on top of this minimum definition. These properties define a taxonomy that can be used to separate and compare existing notions of access control simulation, many of which were previously incomparable. We position existing notions of simulation within our properties lattice by formally proving each simulation's equivalence to a corresponding set of properties. Lastly, we take steps towards bridging the gap between theory and practice by exploring the systems implications of points within our properties lattice. This shows that relative expressive analysis is more than just a theoretical tool, and can also guide the choice of the most suitable access control system for a specific application or scenario.