Anubis Access Control Policy Vocabulary

This repository manage the vocabulary used by Anubis to support policy portability.

The vocabulary is published at http://voc.orchestracities.io/oc-acl

The vocabulary has been developed using Protege.

Description

The oc-acl vocabulary extends Web Access control with specific actors, actions, and with support for constraints.

In the current version of the vocabulary, a policy is an authorization rule (i.e. instance of acl:Authorization) with the following properties:

an access object (i.e. an acl:accessTo predicate) that defines the resources to which the authorization rule provide access to.
an access mode (i.e. an acl:mode predicate) that defines the actions an authorized agent can perform on a resource.
an access subject (i.e. an acl:agent or acl:agentClass or acl:agentGroup predicate) that defines the authorized agents.
an access constraint (i.e. an oc-acl:constraint predicate) that extends authorization supported by WAC vocabulary with ODRL constraints that need to be verified for an authorized agent to perform an operation on a resource.

As result, policies in oc-acl looks like:

@base <http://example.com/> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.com/> .
@prefix acl: <http://www.w3.org/ns/auth/acl#> . 
@prefix oc-acl: <http://voc.orchestracities.io/oc-acl#> . 
@prefix odrl: <http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:constraint1 a odrl:Constraint ;
      odrl:leftOperand odrl:dateTime ;
      odrl:operator odrl:lt ;
      odrl:rightOperand "2023-01-01"^^xsd:date .

ex:policy1 a acl:Authorization ;
        acl:accessTo <urn:entity:1> ;
        acl:agentClass <acl:agentClass:Admin> ;
        oc-acl:constraint ex:constraint1 ;
        acl:mode oc-acl:Decrypt, oc-acl:Delete .

This example policy states that users with role Admin can access the resource urn:entity:1 to perform read and delete operations only before 2023-01-01.

The oc-acl vocabulary, beyond introducing the oc-acl:constraint predicate, extends Web Access Control vocabulary with the following classes:

oc-acl:Delete extends access modes by providing a specific write access mode which only allows to delete information.
oc-acl:ResourceTenantAgent, an authenticated agent that belongs to the same tenant as the resource authorized.
oc-acl:Decrypt extends access modes by providing a specific read access mode which only allows to decrypt encrypted data. This would allow to specify that a given actor can read decrypted values of a specific attribute. This access mode is meant to be combined with [data protection policies](#Data Protection Policies).

Attribute Based Access Control

Constraints in ODRL are either boolean expression (cf. Constraint) or logical expressions (cf. Logical Constraint chaining multiple boolean expressions.

In the context of oc-acl there is not need to extend Logical Constraint with additional operators, given that existing ones covers already all possible logical expressions (and, or, ...).

Boolean expressions are composed of different items:

a leftOperand, the left operand for a constraint expression.
an operator
a rightOperand, the value of the right operand in a constraint expression, or a rightOperandReference, i.e. a reference to a web resource providing the value for the right operand of a Constraint.
a dataType, the datatype of the value of the rightOperand or rightOperandReference of a Constraint.
a unit, the unit of measurement of the value of the rightOperand or rightOperandReference of a Constraint.

While several of the LeftOperand instances in place make sense only for digital media access management (e.g. Absolute Spatial Asset Position), in the context of oc-acl, to support attribute based access control (ABAC), extensions a required. In particular, to allow the definition of attribute based expressions on actors and resources, we introduced a sub class of the LeftOperand concept, called GenericLeftOperand that has the following properties:

scope that defines whether the scope of the operand is subject or object (for the time being environment, often used in ABAC, is left out);
attributeName that defines the name of the attribute to which the operator will be applied.

Leveraging this information, a policy that would allow read access to a given resource only for actors born before 1st January 1978, would look something like:

@base <http://example.com/> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.com/> .
@prefix acl: <http://www.w3.org/ns/auth/acl#> . 
@prefix oc-acl: <http://voc.orchestracities.io/oc-acl#> . 
@prefix odrl: <http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .


ex:leftOperand1 a oc-acl:LeftOperandAttribute ;
    oc-acl:scope oc-acl:subject ;
    oc-acl:attributeName "dateOfBirth" .

ex:constraint1 a odrl:Constraint ;
    odrl:leftOperand ex:leftOperand1 ;
    odrl:operator odrl:lt ;
    odrl:rightOperand "1978-01-01"^^xsd:date .

ex:policy1 a acl:Authorization ;
        acl:accessTo <urn:entity:1> ;
        acl:agentClass acl:AuthenticatedAgent ;
        oc-acl:constraint ex:constraint1 ;
        acl:mode acl:Read .

Of course specific leftOperand may be additionally defined based on the different scenarios of application of oc-acl.

Data Protection Policies

Beyond access control policies, we introduced a new set of policies (agent independent) that defines which data protection policy is applied to a specific attribute within a data or data type. While such policies are not a simple extension to Web Access Control, but rather a new set of policies, we include them in the same vocabulary since they are strictly related. The policies leverage the Data Privacy Vocabulary (DPV).

In the current version of the vocabulary, a data protection policy is an data protection rule (i.e. instance of oc-acl:DataProtection) with the following properties:

an protected resource (i.e. an oc-acl:protectedResource predicate) that defines the resources to which the data protection rule applies to. It can by a resource, or a class of resources.
an protected attribute (i.e. an oc-acl:protectedAttribute predicate) that defines the attribute of the resource that is protected by the rule (thus allowing multiple attributes having different protection techniques).
an protection mode (i.e. an oc-acl:protectionMode predicate) that defines wether the protection occurs in transit (i.e. dpv:EncryptionInTransfer) or at rest (i.e. dpv:EncryptionAtRest).
a protection technique (i.e. an oc-acl:protectionTechnique predicate) that defines which algorithm is used to protect the resource, i.e. instances of dpv:DataAnonymisationTechnique or dpv:CryptographicMethods techniques.

Leveraging this information, a policy that would encrypt with Homorphic Encryption in transfer of the attribute:1 of entity:1 would be:

@base <http://example.com/> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.com/> .
@prefix acl: <http://www.w3.org/ns/auth/acl#> . 
@prefix oc-acl: <http://voc.orchestracities.io/oc-acl#> . 
@prefix odrl: <http://www.w3.org/ns/odrl/2/> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:policyProtection1 a oc-acl:DataProtection ;
        oc-acl:protectedResource <urn:entity:1> ;
        oc-acl:protectedAttribute <urn:attribute:1> ;
        oc-acl:protectionMode dpv:EncryptionInTransfer ;
        oc-acl:protectionTechnique dpv:HomomorphicEncryption .

orchestracities/anubis-vocabulary

Anubis Access Control Policy Vocabulary

Description

Attribute Based Access Control

Data Protection Policies