Enforcing Conformance between Security Architecture and Implementation

Abstract

Analysis at the level of a runtime architecture matches the way experts reason about security or privacy better than a purely code-based strategy. However, the architecture must still be correctly realized in the implementation.We previously developed Scholia to analyze, at compile time, communication integrity between arbitrary object-oriented code, and a rich, hierarchical intended runtime architecture, using typecheckable annotations. This paper applies Scholia to security runtime architectures. Having established traceability between the target architecture and the code, we extend Scholia to enforce structural architectural constraints. At the code level, annotations enforce local, modular constraints. At the architectural level, predicates enforce global constraints. We validate the end-to-end approach in practice using a real 3,000-line Java implementation, and enforce its conformance to a security architecture designed by an expert.Abi-Antoun was supported in part by DARPA grant #HR00110710019, NSF grant CCF-0546550, and Army Research Office grant #DAAD19-02-1-0389 entitled "Perpetually Available and Secure Information Systems."Barnes was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), United States Navy, N000140811223 as part of the HSCB project under OSD, by the US Army Research Office (ARO) under grant numbers DAAD19-02-1-0389 ("Perpetually Available and Secure Information Systems") to Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab and DAAD19-01-1-0485, and by the Software Engineering Institute at CMU. The views and conclusions described here are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of any funding agency, the US government, or any other entity. Report Documentation PageForm Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number.

Developer refinement of runtime architectural structure

“…The current approach supports the above activity in the following ways [5]. First, one could use another layer of annotations, namely, domain links [7].…”