Delegation through Access Control Programs

摘要

Access control programs (ACPs) permit controlled delegation of access rights to untrusted computer hosts. Existing delegation protocols for distributed systems provide a way for a client to transfer its access rights to an intermediary, but provide only limited facilities for restricting the rights granted to the intermediary. ACPs are small programs that encode arbitrary specifications of delegated access rights. They are created and digitally signed by a client and passed to a server through an intermediary. When processing a request from the intermediary, the server executes the access control program to decide whether or not to grant the intermediary's request. The paper describes ACPs, gives examples of their use in a variety of applications, and describes a sample implementation of them in the Andrew File System. (Copyright (c) 1992 Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved.)