Distributed Credential Chain Discovery in Trust Management (Extended Abstract)

Abstract:

We give goal-oriented algorithms for discovering credential chains in RT₀, a role-based trust-management language introduced in this paper. The algorithms search credential graphs, a representation of RT₀ credentials. We prove that evaluation based on reachability in credential graphs is sound and complete with respect to the set-theoretic semantics of RT₀. RT₀ is more expressive than SDSI 2.0, so our algorithms can perform chain discovery in SDSI 2.0, for which existing algorithms in the literature either are not goal-oriented or require using specialized logic-programming inferencing engines. Being goal-oriented enables our algorithms to be used when credential storage is distributed. We introduce a type system for credential storage that guarantees well-typed, distributed credential chains can be discovered.

Reference:
In Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pages 156--165. ACM Press, November 2001.

Paper: PDF.

Related papers:
Superseded by the full version to appear in Journal of Computer Security.

BibTex Data:

@InProceedings{LWM01,
  author =       "Ninghui Li and William H. Winsborough and John C. Mitchell",
  title =        "Distributed Credential Chain Discovery in Trust Management (Extended Abstract)",
  booktitle =    "Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security",
  publisher =    "ACM Press",
  month =        nov,
  year =         "2001",
  pages =        "156--165",
}