Context-aware security: Linguistic mechanisms and static analysis

Abstract

Adaptive systems improve their efficiency by modifying their behaviour to respond to changes in their operational environment. Also, security must adapt to these changes and policy enforcement becomes dependent on the dynamic contexts. We study these issues within MLCoDa, (the core of) an adaptive declarative language proposed recently. A main characteristic of MLCoDa is to have two components: a logical one for handling the context and a functional one for computing. We extend this language with security policies that are expressed in logical terms. They are of two different kinds: context and application policies. The first, unknown ap riorito an application, protect the context from unwanted changes. The others protect the applications from malicious actions of the context, can be nested and can be activated and deactivated according to their scope. An execution step can only occur if all the policies in force hold, under the control of an execution monitor. Beneficial to this is a type and effect system, which safely approximates the behaviour of an application, and a further static analysis, based on the computed effect. The last analysis can only be carried on at load time, when the execution context is known, and it enables us to efficiently enforce the security policies on the code execution, by instrumenting applications. The monitor is thus implemented within MLCoDa, and it is only activated on those policies that may be infringed, and switched off otherwise.