Component-oriented access control—Application servers meet tuple spaces for the masses

Abstract

With the advancements in contemporary multi-core CPU architectures and increase in main memory capacity, it is now possible for a server operating system (OS), such as Linux, to handle a large number of concurrent application services on a single server instance. Individual application components of such services may run in different isolated runtime environments, such as chrooted jails or application containers, and may need access to system resources and the ability to collaborate and coordinate with each other in a regulated and secure manner. We implemented an access control framework for policy formulation, management, and enforcement that allows access to OS resources and also permits controlled collaboration and coordination for service components running in disjoint containerized environments under a single Linux OS server instance. The framework consists of two models and the policy formulation is based on the concept of policy classes for ease of administration and enforcement. The policy classes are managed and enforced through a Linux Policy Machine (LPM) that acts as the centralized reference monitor and provides a uniform interface for accessing system resources and requesting application data and control objects. We present the details of our framework and also discuss the preliminary implementation to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.