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Distributed Authorization With Distributed Grammars

Mike Burrows
Himabindu Pucha
Adam Sadovsky
Asim Shankar
Ankur Taly
Programming Languages with Applications to Biology and Security, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, Gewerbestrasse 11 CH-6330 Cham (ZG) Switzerland (2015), pp. 10-26
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Abstract

While groups are generally helpful for the definition of authorization policies, their use in distributed systems is not straightforward. This paper describes a design for authorization in distributed systems that treats groups as formal languages. The design supports forms of delegation and negative clauses in authorization policies. It also considers the wish for privacy and efficiency in group-membership checks, and the possibility that group definitions may not all be available and may contain cycles.