An information flow control meta-model

Abstract

In this paper a meta-model for information flow control is defined using the foundation of Barker's access control meta-model. The purposes for defining this meta-model is to achieve a more principled understanding of information flow control, to compare information flow control and access control at an abstract level, and to explore how information flow control and access control might be composed to yield a rich new set of ideas and systems for controlling the dissemination of sensitive information. It is shown that it is possible to define a meta-model for information flow control, that such a model is more complex compared to the access control meta-model, and that the meta-models for information flow control and access control can be composed in a conceptually straightforward way.