We describe the formalization of a correctness proof for a conflict detection algorithm for XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language). XACML is a standardized declarative access control policy language that is increasingly used in industry. In practice it is common for rule sets to grow large, and contain unintended errors, often due to conflicting rules. A conflict occurs in a policy when one rule permits a request and another denies that same request. Such errors can lead to serious risks involving both allowing access to an unauthorized user as well as denying access to someone who needs it. Removing conflicts is thus an important aspect of debugging policies, and the use of a verified algorithm provides the highest assurance in a domain where security is important. In this paper, we extend our previous work on verification of conflict detection for Cisco firewall rules. We focus on several XACML constructs, the most complex of which are used for expressing time constraints. XACML is a significantly more expressive language than the one used to express firewall rules in Cisco products, and time constraints provide a good illustration of that expressive power. We propose an algorithm to find conflicts and then use the Coq Proof Assistant to prove the algorithm correct. We develop a library of tactics to help automate the proof.
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