Hecate, managing authorization with RESTful XML

Abstract

The potentials of REST offers new ways for communications between louse coupled entities featured through the Web of Things [12]. The binding of the disjunct components of this architecture creates security issues, such as the centralized authorization techniques respecting the independence of the underlying entities. This results in the question how authorization is performed respecting the flexibility of REST without any knowledge about the underlying resources. Nevertheless, possible knowledge about these resources should enable the authorization workflow to offer finer-granular permissions on substructures of the resources. With our new approach-we named Hecate-we offer a framework to assure simplified handling while keeping the potentials and flexibility of REST. We have designed an architecture based on XML with a flexible authorization mechanism on the one hand and optional resource-awareness on the other hand. The flexibility within the authorization work-flow bases on permission sets respecting the HTTPverbs. Additional in-depth knowledge of the entity optionally extends these permissions with resource-aware filters. Hecate offers not only great benefits because of its flexibility, but also because of the optional extensibility proved within the two reference implementations. With Hecate, we show that a centralized authorization mechanism combining independence and optional resource-based filtering extends the flexibility of REST rather than restricting it.

On the Need for a General REST-Security Framework

“…Note, that only approaches are listed, which ensure authenticity and integrity of distinct message elements. The schemes proposed in [33,34,[36][37][38]40,43,44,61] and API-keys are omitted for readability reasons, since they do not provide any integrity protection for headers.…”

Infraestruturas de Autenticação e de Autorização para Internet das Coisas

“…4.6.1.4. Hecate [Graf et al 2011] Hecate, proposto em [Graf et al 2011], define um framework de autorização centralizado e flexível. O Hecate usa do conhecimento da estrutura dos recursos oferecidos pelos dispositivos para tomar decisões de autorização.…”