Enforcing spatial constraints for mobile RBAC systems

  • Authors:
  • Michael S. Kirkpatrick;Elisa Bertino

  • Affiliations:
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA;Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 15th ACM symposium on Access control models and technologies
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Proposed models for spatially-aware extensions of role-based access control (RBAC) combine the administrative and security advantages of RBAC with the dynamic nature of mobile and pervasive computing systems. However, implementing systems that enforce these models poses a number of challenges. As a solution, we propose an architecture for designing such a system. The architecture is based on an enhanced RBAC model that supports location-based access control policies by incorporating spatial constraints. Enforcing spatially-aware RBAC policies in a mobile environment requires addressing several challenges. First, one must guarantee the integrity of a user's location during an access request. We adopt a proximity-based solution using Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology. The next challenge is to verify the user's position continuously satisfies the location constraints. To capture these policy restrictions, we incorporate elements of the UCON_ABC usage control model in our architecture. In this work, we also propose a number of protocols, describe our prototype implementation, report the performance of our prototype, and evaluate the security guarantees.