First European Symposium On Research In Computer Security (ESORICS 90)
An Intrusion-Tolerant Security Server for an Open Distributed System
Laurent Blain, Yves Deswarte
Keywords :
Abstract : This paper describes a new approach for security in distributed systems. This approach consists of gathering most of the security functions of the distributed system into a set of specialized sites, the security sites, responsible for user authentication, authorization and security auditing. These security sites constitute a distributed security server which can be globally trusted, even if no individual site is trusted: an intrusion into a minority of the security sites is tolerated because it has no consequence on the confidentiality or integrity of the security management data and no consequence on the availability of the overall security service. This technique is well adapted to open, heterogeneous distributed systems since no individual site has to be trusted. An extended discretionary access control policy is proposed which is consistent with this openness. An experimental distributed security server based on this technique is currently developed as part of the DELTA-4 project of the European ESPRIT programme.
(Pages 97-104)