A formal model for access control with supporting spatial context

Abstract

There is an emerging recognition of the importance of utilizing contextual information in authorization decisions. Controlling access to resources in the field of wireless and mobile networking require the definition of a formal model for access control with supporting spatial context. However, traditional RBAC model does not specify these spatial requirements. In this paper, we extend the existing RBAC model and propose the SC-RBAC model that utilizes spatial and location-based information in security policy definitions. The concept of spatial role is presented, and the role is assigned a logical location domain to specify the spatial boundary. Roles are activated based on the current physical position of the user which obtained from a specific mobile terminal. We then extend SC-RBAC to deal with hierarchies, modeling permission, user and activation inheritance, and prove that the hierarchical spatial roles are capable of constructing a lattice which is a means for articulate multi-level security policy and more suitable to control the information flow security for safety-critical location-aware information systems. Next, constrained SC-RBAC allows express various spatial separations of duty constraints, location-based cardinality and temporal constraints for specify fine-grained spatial semantics that are typical in location-aware systems. Finally, we introduce 9 invariants for the constrained SC-RBAC and its basic security theorem is proven. The constrained SC-RBAC provides the foundation for applications in need of the constrained spatial context aware access control.