Admin-CBAC: An Administration Model for Category-Based Access Control

Abstract

We present Admin-CBAC, an administrative model for Category- Based Access Control (CBAC). Since most of the access control models in use nowadays are instances of CBAC, in particular the popular RBAC and ABAC models, from Admin-CBAC we derive administrative models for RBAC and ABAC too. We define Admin- CBAC using Barker's metamodel, and use its axiomatic semantics to derive properties of administrative policies. Using an abstract operational semantics for administrative actions, we show how properties (such as safety, liveness and effectiveness of policies) and constraints (such as separation of duties) can be checked, and discuss the impact of policy changes. Although the most interesting properties of policies are generally undecidable in dynamic access control models, we identify particular cases where reachability based properties are decidable and can be checked using our operational semantics, generalising previous results for RBAC and ABACalpha.