HCC-Small: Collaborative Mixed-Initiative Access Control

HCC-Small：协作混合主动访问控制

• 批准号: 0810861
• 负责人: Prasun Dewan
• 金额: $ 41.02万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-01 至 2015-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0810861&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: HCC; Small; Collaborative; Mixed; Initiative

Today, we are faced with three apparently conflicting problems: users are afraid to collaborate unless they have fine-grained control over how their data are accessed by others; many shared environments, especially the new ones, do not offer such controls because of the difficulty of implementing them; those that do offer such controls provide access mechanisms that are difficult to understand and use and result in users being assigned wrong access rights. In this project the PI will investigate the idea of using special-purpose collaborative environments to distribute access, with the goal of developing a general model of access distribution that captures in-use and promising mixed-initiative schemes that have so far been defined only in an application-dependent fashion. The model will be defined using several new kinds of application-independent objects such as access requests and grants that capture the information exchanged in a mixed-initiative system. It will be compatible with existing authorization models including object-based models, in which copies of objects are granted, and rights-based models such as role-based access control, in which (potentially revocable) rights to the object granted. In the PI's approach, the initiative in distributing access rights to shared objects can be taken by information guardians, information consumers, and tools that act as agents of the guardians and the consumers. Information consumers are responsible for sending access requests to information guardians; their agents will (partially or completely) automate this task for them. Information guardians are responsible for authorizing access; their agents will automate this task for them. The PI will identify a general architecture for implementing his model, in which the access-awareness in existing collaboration and communication tools is kept low. In addition, the PI will develop programming abstractions that make it easy to implement the model using the architecture. He will use the abstractions to add mixed-initiative access control in several target systems, which will include both complex widely-used traditional file systems and distributed web services; this experience will help the PI evaluate the programmability of the abstractions. Finally, he will perform field and lab studies to compare alternative approaches to distribute access supported by the general model. Broader Impacts: If successful, this work will open up a new research area focusing on collaborative mixed-initiative access control, and show that collaborative systems are not only a liability for access control but also an asset. Project outcomes will lead to significant improvement in the usability and programmability of fine-grained authorization mechanisms, thereby facilitating a large number of collaborations that would otherwise not take place. They will also afford a better understanding of the similarities and differences between different access distribution schemes and the consequences of using them. In the short term, the project will develop research and teaching software consisting of two main components: layers on top of widely-used file systems that provide several new access distribution schemes, which can be evaluated by usability researchers and demonstrated in classes on security; and programming abstractions allowing the incorporation of these schemes in new shared environments implemented using web services, which can be used in both class and research projects.

今天，我们面临着三个明显相互矛盾的问题：用户害怕协作，除非他们对其他人如何访问他们的数据有细粒度的控制;许多共享环境，特别是新的环境，不提供这样的控制，因为难以实现它们;那些提供这种控制的系统提供的访问机制难以理解和使用，并导致用户被分配错误的访问权限。 在这个项目中，PI将研究使用特殊目的的协作环境来分配访问的想法，其目标是开发一个通用的访问分配模型，该模型捕获了使用中的和有前途的混合倡议计划，到目前为止，这些计划仅以应用程序依赖的方式定义。 该模型将使用几种新的独立于应用程序的对象来定义，如访问请求和赠款，这些对象捕获在混合主动系统中交换的信息。 它将与现有的授权模式兼容，包括基于对象的模式，其中授予对象的副本，以及基于权限的模式，如基于角色的访问控制，其中授予对象的（可能可撤销的）权限。 在PI的方法中，信息监护人、信息消费者以及充当监护人和消费者代理的工具可以主动分配对共享对象的访问权限。 信息消费者负责将访问请求发送给信息监护人;他们的代理将（部分或完全）自动执行此任务。 信息监护人负责授权访问;他们的代理将自动执行此任务。 PI将确定一个通用的架构来实现他的模型，其中现有的协作和通信工具的访问意识保持在较低的水平。 此外，PI将开发编程抽象，使其易于使用架构实现模型。 他将使用这些抽象在几个目标系统中添加混合主动访问控制，这些目标系统将包括复杂的广泛使用的传统文件系统和分布式Web服务;这些经验将帮助PI评估抽象的可编程性。 最后，他将进行现场和实验室研究，以比较通用模型支持的分布式访问的替代方法。更广泛的影响：如果成功，这项工作将开辟一个新的研究领域，重点是协作混合主动访问控制，并表明，协作系统不仅是访问控制的责任，但也是一种资产。 项目成果将导致细粒度授权机制的可用性和可编程性的显著改进，从而促进大量的合作，否则将不会发生。它们还将使人们更好地理解不同接入分配方案之间的相似性和差异以及使用这些方案的后果。 在短期内，该项目将开发由两个主要部分组成的研究和教学软件：在广泛使用的文件系统之上的层，提供几种新的访问分配方案，可由可用性研究人员进行评估，并在安全课程中演示;以及允许将这些方案结合到使用Web服务实现的新共享环境中的编程抽象，它可以用于课堂和研究项目。