Access Control
Access Control
Access Control
Access Control
• RFC 4949, Internet Security Glossary, defines access
control as:
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Access Control
• Access is the manner by which the user utilizes the information
systems to get information
– All users should not have the ability to access all systems and its
information
– Access should be restricted and granted on a need to know basis
• To manage access
– User accounts are established by issuing identifiers
– Authentication methods to verify these identifiers
– Authorization rules that limit access to resources and
– Accountability an independent review and examination of system
records and activities
Access Control
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Access Control
Granting of a right or
permission to an entity to
access a system resource
Identification
• Method of establishing the subject’s or user’s identity
– Person, program, process, client, software application, hardware, or
network
• It is what a user uses to differentiate itself from others
– A unique identifier
– Use of username or other public information
• Identification component requirements
– Each value should be unique
– Follow a standard naming scheme
– Non‐descriptive of the user’s position or tasks
– Must not be shared between users
• Once a user has an identifier the next step taken to access a
resource is authentication
– An individual’s identity must be verified during the authentication process
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Authentication
• The process of validating the identity of the user ‐ method of
proving the identity
– Verifying that the credentials of a user or other system entity are valid,
thereby providing a level of trust
– Use of passwords, token, biometrics, or other private information
• Authentication usually involves a two-step process
– Entering public information (a username, employee number, account
number, or department ID), and then ‐ Identification step
– Entering private information (a static password, smart token, cognitive
password, one‐time password, or PIN) – Authentication step
Authentication
• How to prove an identity? Three basic factors to authenticate an
identity
– Something you know (knowledge-based authentication)
• Password, PIN
– Something you have (Ownership-based Authentication)
• key, swipe card, access card
– Something you are (Biometric authentication)
• Retina scan
• A more reliable authentication process would require two or all
of these three factors such as something you know with
something you have
– This form is known as the two-factor or multilevel authentication
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Authentication
• Computers and devices can be identified, authenticated,
monitored, and controlled based upon their MAC and IP
– Networks may have network access control (NAC) technology to
authenticate systems before they are allowed access to the network
• Uses
– Password
– Passphrase
– Cognitive password
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Example
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– After the threshold is met, the user’s account can be locked for a period
of time or indefinitely, which requires an administrator to manually
unlock the account
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Authorization
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Authorization
• The granting of a right or permission to subjects to access a
system resource
– Determines who is trusted for a given purpose
• Determines that the proven identity has some set of
characteristics associated with it that gives it the right to
access the requested resources
• Granting access rights to subjects should be based on the level
of trust a company has in a subject and the subject’s need to
know
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Authorization
• Access criteria can be thought of as:
– Roles
• An efficient way to assign rights to a type of user who performs a certain
task (job assignment or function)
– Groups
• When several users require same type of access to information and
resources
– Location
• To restrict unauthorized individuals from being able to get in and
reconfigure the server remotely
– Time
• Restrict the times that certain actions or services can be accessed
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Authorization
Access Control Elements
Subject
• An active entity that requests access to an object or the data in
an object
• Any user or application actually gains access to an object by
means of a process that represents that user or application
– The process takes on the attributes of the user, such as access rights
• A subject is typically held accountable for the actions they have
initiated
– An audit trail may be used to record the association of a subject with
security‐relevant actions performed on an object by the subject
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Authorization
Access Control Elements
Subject
• Basic access control systems typically define three classes of
subject
• Owner: the creator of a resource, such as a file
• Group: in addition to the privileges assigned to an owner, a
named group of users may also be granted access rights
– Membership in the group is sufficient to exercise these access rights
– A user may belong to multiple groups
• World: users who are able to access the system but are not
included in the categories owner and group for this resource
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Authorization
Access Control Elements
Object
• A resource to which access is controlled
• Examples include records, blocks, pages, segments, files,
portions of files, directories, directory trees, mailboxes,
messages, and programs
• Objects may be individual data fields or even the entire
database
• Some access control systems also encompass, bits, bytes, words,
processors, communication ports, clocks, and network nodes
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Authorization
Access Control Elements
Access right
• Describes the way in which a subject may access an object
• Access rights could include
– Read: User may view information in a system resource
• Read access includes the ability to copy or print
– Write: User may add, modify, or delete data in system resource
• Write access includes read access
– Execute: User may execute specified programs
– Delete: User may delete certain system resources, such as files or
records
– Create: User may create new files, records, or fields
– Search: User may list the files in a directory or otherwise search the
directory
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Authorization
Access Control Policies
• An access control policy embodies in an authorization
database
• Dictates
– What types of access are permitted
– Under what circumstances
– by whom
• Access control policies are grouped into
Discretionary access control (DAC)
– based on the identity of the requestor and on access rules
Mandatory access control (MAC)
– based on comparing security labels with clearances
Role‐based access control (RBAC)
– based on the roles and their accesses
Attribute‐based access control (ABAC)
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Authorization
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
• The traditional method of implementing access control
• Defines access control policy that restricts access to files and other
system resources based on identity
• Allows the owner of the resource to specify which subjects can access
which resources
– Access control is at the discretion of the owner
• Can be implemented through
Access Control Lists (ACLs)
– Specifies the list of subjects that are authorized to access a specific object
Capability Lists
– Specifies the access rights a certain subject possesses to specific objects
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Authorization
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
DAC Matrix
• DAC is provided using an access matrix
– Lists subjects in one dimension (rows)
– Lists objects in the other dimension (columns)
– Each entry in the matrix indicates the access rights of a particular
subject for a particular object
Access Matrix
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Authorization
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
An Authorization table
• A data structure that is not sparse, like
the access matrix
• but is more convenient than either
ACLs or capability lists
• Contains one row for one access right
of one subject to one resource
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Authorization
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
Example: Unix File Access Control
• Modern UNIX systems support ACLs
– Each UNIX user is assigned a unique user identification number (user ID)
– A user is also a member of a primary group, and possibly a number of
other groups, each identified by a group ID
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Authorization
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
Example: Unix File Access Control
• When a file is created, it is designated as owned by a particular
user and marked with that user’s ID
– All types of UNIX files are administered by the operating system by
means of inode (index node)
– inode is a control structure that contains the key information needed
by the operating system for a particular file
– owner ID, group ID, and protection bits are part of file’s inode
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Authorization
Mandatory Access Control(MAC)
• Unlike DAC, users do not have the discretion of determining who
can access objects as in a DAC model
– Based on security label system
– Users given security clearance and data is classified
• Reduces the amount of rights, permissions, and functionality
that a user has
• Used in environments where information classification and
confidentiality is very important (e.g., the military)
• MAC based systems
– SELinux by NSA ‐ is an implementation of MAC in the Linux kernel
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Authorization
Mandatory Access Control(MAC)
• MAC is considered a policy based control
• Every object and subject is given a sensitivity label
– Classification level
• Secret, Top secret, Confidential, etc.
– Category
• Information warfare, Treasury, UN, etc.
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Authorization
Mandatory Access Control(MAC)
• In MAC implementations
– Access decisions by comparing the subject’s clearance and need-to-
know level to the object’s security label
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Authorization
Mandatory Access Control(MAC)
• SELinux by NSA ‐ is an implementation of MAC in the Linux kernel
– Integrated into the 2.6.x kernel using the Linux Security Modules
– In Android 4.3 and higher
• In a DAC systems, an owner of a particular resource controls access
permissions associated with it
• This is coarse-grained and subject to unintended privilege escalation
• A MAC system, however, consults a central authority for a decision
on all access attempts
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Authorization
Mandatory Access Control(MAC)
• SELinux can enforce a user‐customizable security policy on running
processes and their actions
– including attempts to access file system objects
• SELinux defines the access and rights of every user, application,
process, and file on the system
– SELinux kernel gives granular control over the entire system
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Authorization
Mandatory Access Control(MAC)
• In standard Linux DAC
– An application or process running as a user (UID or SUID) has the user's
permissions to objects such as files, sockets, and other processes
• For instance: if the root user becomes compromised that user can
write to every block device
– However, SELinux can be used to label these devices so the process
assigned the root privilege can write to only those specified in the
associated policy
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Authorization
Android Permission Framework
• At install-time, when the app asks for a permission in its manifest the
corresponding permission is assigned to the app
– package manager stores all permission information of an app in package.xml file
• At run-time, the Android middleware implements a reference
monitor providing mandatory access control (MAC) to monitor access
to application components
App1 Manifest App2 Manifest
P1 , P2 …. P3 , P4 ….
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Authorization
Role Based Access Control(RBAC)
• Based on the roles that users assume in a system rather than the
user’s identity
• Typically, RBAC models define a role as a job function within an
organization
• RBAC systems assign access rights to roles instead of individual
users
– Users are assigned to different roles, according to their responsibilities
– The relationship of users to roles and roles to resources is many to many
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Authorization
Role Based Access Control(RBAC)
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Authorization
Role Based Access Control(RBAC)
Authorization
Context-Dependent Access Control
• Makes access decisions based on the context of a collection of
information rather than on the sensitivity of the data
– A system that is using context‐dependent access control
“reviews the situation” and then makes a decision
– For example, firewalls make context based access decisions when they
collect state information on a packet before allowing it into the network
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Authorization
Attribute-Based Access Control
• Uses attributes of any part of a system to define allowable access
• Some possible attributes to describe our ABAC policies:
– Subjects: Clearance, position title, department, years with the organization,
training certification on a specific platform, member of a project team, location
– Objects: Classification, files pertaining to a particular project, human resources
(HR) records, location, security system component
– Actions: Review, approve, comment, archive, configure, restart
– Context: Time of day, project status (open/closed), fiscal year, ongoing audit
Authorization
Risk-Based Access Control
• Estimates the risk associated with a particular request in real
time and, if it doesn’t exceed a given threshold, grants the subject
access to the requested resource
– For example, suppose David works for a technology manufacturer that is
about to release a super‐secret new product that will revolutionize the world
– If the details of this product are leaked before the announcement, it will
negatively impact revenues and the return on investment of the marketing
campaigns
– Should David be granted access it?
• The risk factors are generally divided into categories like user context,
resource sensitivity, action severity, and risk history.
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Authorization
Risk-Based Access Control
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Identify Management
• Once an organization develops a security policy, supporting
procedures, standards, and guidelines
– It must choose the type of access control model to implement that will
support the organization's access control needs
• Why Identity management?
– Simplify the administration of distributed, overlapping, and conflicting
data about the users of an organization
• Identity management techniques or access control
administration comes in two basic forms:
– Centralized access control: all authorization verification by a single
entity within a system
– Decentralized access control: by various entities located throughout a
system
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Cross-certification model
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Third-party Certification
Trust model
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WLAN Authentication
• Authentication mechanisms for Wireless LANs
• Many different methods to authenticate wireless clients
– Open Authentication
– WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)‐ Shared Key Authentication
– 802.1X/EAP
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WLAN Authentication
Open Authentication
• The client sends a probe request frames
– Data rates, SSID (BSSID: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff)
• The APs send back probe responses
– SSID (wireless network name), supported data rates,
encryption types if required, and other 802.11
capabilities of the AP
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WLAN Authentication
Open Authentication
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WLAN Authentication
Shared Key Authentication
• The client sends an authentication request
to the AP
• The AP sends an authentication response
that contains the unencrypted challenge
text
• The client encrypts the challenge text with
the WEP key and sends the text to the AP
• The AP compares the unencrypted
challenge text with the encrypted challenge
text • Use the WEP key for
authentication and encryption
• Uses WEP encryption during the
client association process 74
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WLAN Authentication
Shared Key Authentication
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WLAN Authentication
802.1X/EAP
• To address the shortcomings and Security vulnerabilities in the
methods of authentication by 802.11
• 802.1x requires these three logical entities to validate the
devices on a WLAN network
– Port‐based authentication
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WLAN Authentication
802.1X/EAP
• The client is usually a user terminal
– The user triggers 802.1X authentication using client software
– Must support Extensible Authentication Protocol over LAN (EAPoL)
• The access device is usually a network device
– Provides a port, either physical or logical, for the client to access the LAN
• The authentication server, typically a RADIUS server, carries out
authentication, authorization, and accounting on users
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WLAN Authentication
802.1X/EAP
• The client, access device, and authentication server exchange
information using the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
• 802.1X is a Layer 2 protocol
– EAP can run over the data link layer and upper layer protocols (such as
UDP and TCP)
– This offers great flexibility to 802.1X authentication.
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WLAN Authentication
802.1X/EAP
• 802.1x defines the procedure to authenticate clients
• EAP type used in the 802.1x framework defines the type of
credentials and method of authentication
• EAP variants:
– EAP‐TLS—Extensible Authentication Protocol Transport Layer Security
– EAP‐MD5—EAP–Message Digest Algorithm 5
– EAP‐FAST—EAP Flexible Authentication via Secured Tunnel
– EAP‐SIM—EAP Subscriber Identity Module
– Cisco LEAP—Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol
– EAP‐PEAP—EAP Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol
– EAP‐OTP—EAP On‐Time Password
– EAP‐TTLS—EAP Tunneled Transport Layer Security
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WLAN Authentication
802.1X/EAP
EAP-MD5
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Accountability
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Accountability
• Tracked by recording user, system, and application activities
• Audit information must be reviewed
– Event Oriented Audit Review
– Real Time and Near Real Time Review
– Audit Reduction Tools
– Variance Detection Tools
– Attack Signature Tools
• Other accountability concepts
– Keystroke Monitoring
• Can review and record keystroke entries by a user during an active session
• May have privacy implications for an organization
– Scrubbing: Removing specific incriminating (implicating) data within
audit logs
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