HUE: A hardware UCON engine for fine-grained continuous usage control

Abstract

Usage control is the field of security which deals with the issue of access decisions on a client platform which is outside the domain of the original owner. These issues include digital rights management, privacy issues and concepts such as content redistribution. UCON is a highly expressive usage control model, which significantly enhances traditional access control models through decision continuity and attribute mutability. Because of these enhancements, UCON is extremely difficult to implement in existing software paradigms. In this paper, we present the novel concept of a hardware-based UCON engine (HUE) which uses a single co-processor to facilitate the realization of UCON. We present an architectural model of the engine and define software requirements to effectively utilize this hardware in existing scenarios. We specify the requirements for such hardware and software and the facilities provided by our architecture. We also present detailed future directions in this area of research.