Support for the file system security requirements of computational E-mail systems

  • Authors:

  • Trent Jaeger;Atul Prakash

  • Affiliations:

  • Software Systems Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI;Software Systems Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

  • Venue:
  • CCS '94 Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Computer and communications security
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

Computational e-mail systems, which allow mail messages to contain command scripts that automatically execute upon receipt, can be used as a basis for building a variety of collaborative applications. However, their use also presents a serious security problem because a command script from a sender may access/modify receiver's private files or execute applications on receiver's behalf. Existing solutions to the problem either severely restrict I/O capability of scripts, limiting the range of applications that can be supported over computational e-mail, or permit all I/O to scripts, potentially compromising the security of the receiver's files. Our model, called the intersection model of security, permits I/O for e-mail from trusted senders but without compromising the security of private files. We describe two implementations of our security model: an interpreter-level implementation and an operating systems-level implementation. We discuss the tradeoffs between the two implementations and suggest directions for future work.