JPH09212367A - Method for controlling access to object and information processing system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To protect objects in an object-oriented system by relating one group of permissions to a method and making a comparison with an access control list to enable access to an object. SOLUTION: The information processing system 10 is equipped with a processor 12, a storage system 14, a display subsystem 18 which controls a display device 20, a cursor controller 22, and an input/output controller 24. The system 10 includes an object-oriented control means including a means for relating one group of permission to the method by judging the class defining the method. By tracing the method up to a definition class, the calling of a before-method by a run-time method is judged so as to avoid the need to inspect the permission. By taking over an object attribute, when there is relation to the permission or rejection of access to the taking-over method, the object protection is elucidated.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information processing system, method, and product, and more specifically, an information processing system, method, and method for protecting an object by access control in an object-oriented system.
And products.

[0002]

In object oriented systems, there is a need to protect access to objects.

In many object-oriented systems, it should be possible to improve the system by extending inheritance to object security. Subclass is
In order to maintain the access control protection introduced by the parent class and preserve the inheritance consistency of the object system, it is necessary to inherit the security information of that parent class. Object-oriented system method-level access control requires that each class be a member of one or more object groups and that each method have one or more permissions defined at the level of that class. Can be done in case. Such a set of permissions is a mandatory access right of the method, namely MR.
It is called AR. For each object group,
Access control lists (ACLs) are associated one by one. A request to execute a method defined by a protected class triggers an access control mechanism that compares the requester's basic privileges with the ACL of the object group of that class and the MRAR set of methods. However, it is important to efficiently determine whether the inherited method was introduced by a protected or unprotected class so that method access checking can proceed accordingly. Furthermore, it is important that a class be able to inherit the correct access control information, including the method's MRAR and the object group of that class, and the applicable access control list.

In the prior art, there are many techniques for improving the object oriented programming system (OOPS).

An example of the prior art is as follows.

US Pat. No. 4,525,780 teaches a data processing system having a memory organized into objects, which system identifies a user with a subject number and a process for executing the user's procedure. And protection techniques to prevent unauthorized access to objects by the user, identified by the type of system action to be performed by the user's procedure. An access control list is maintained to control access to the object based on the subject ID.

Although the patent generally deals with methods for protecting access to an object in an object oriented program, the patent does not deal with such objects as taught and claimed herein in connection with the present invention. It does not teach or suggest the use of inheritance of security attributes of object-oriented systems to control access.

US Pat. No. 5,136,712 teaches an object-based operating system for a multitasking computer system that includes means for dedicating an object to a process. Access to private objects is controlled by access control lists.

Although the patent generally deals with methods for protecting access to objects in object-oriented programs, the patent does not deal with such objects as taught and claimed herein in connection with the present invention. It does not teach or suggest the use of inheritance of security attributes of object-oriented systems to control access.

US Pat. No. 5,265,221 teaches an access control mechanism for granting, revoking, and denying permissions to objects using a system of verbs, parameters, attributes, and functions.

Although the patent generally deals with a method for protecting access to an object in an object oriented program, the patent does not deal with such objects as taught and claimed herein in connection with the present invention. It does not teach or suggest the use of inheritance of security attributes of object-oriented systems to control access.

US Pat. No. 5,297,283 and US Pat. No. 5,321,841 are described in the above US Pat. No. 5,136,712.
It seems to teach the same system as the issue.

Although the patent generally deals with a method for protecting access to an object in an object oriented program, the patent does not deal with such objects as taught and claimed herein in connection with the present invention. It does not teach or suggest the use of inheritance of security attributes of object-oriented systems to control access.

In general, US Pat. No. 5,093,914 describes the execution of an object-oriented program to perform a defined action, such as stopping the program when calling a specified virtual function for a specified object during execution of the program. Teach the method used by a digital computer in controlling a computer.

Although the patent generally deals with methods for protecting access to an object in an object oriented program, the patent does not deal with such objects as taught and claimed herein in connection with the present invention. It does not teach or suggest the use of inheritance of security attributes of object-oriented systems to control access.

US Pat. No. 5,343,554 discloses first and second such that a second class object is externally callable and an externally callable subclass object contains a representation of an internally callable subclass object. Creating an object of a class and executing the object of that class such that one externally callable sub-object calls an internally callable sub-object and in response a new object of the first class is created Teaching a computing system in which the problem is solved by a process including and.

Although the patent generally deals with a method for protecting access to an object in an object oriented program, the patent does not deal with such objects as taught and claimed herein in connection with the present invention. It does not teach or suggest the use of inheritance of security attributes of object-oriented systems to control access.

The overall goal of object-oriented programming systems is to make reusable programs
It is the development of objects.

With the degree of reuse, binary code becomes more important than source code. The main purpose of object-oriented technology is code reuse. Reuse of binary code is essential for object-oriented technology to achieve massive success. Binary code is important because state-of-the-art is towards applications that build from multiple object formats that can be coordinated and inserted together.

The object management group defines a set of interfaces for object system services called common object services.

[0021]

It is an object of the present invention to protect objects in an object oriented system by controlling access to the objects.

[0022]

Therefore, a system, method, and method for controlling access to an object in an information processing system using object-oriented technology is provided.
And the product comprises a processor, a memory system,
An input / output controller for controlling each input / output device, a bus connecting the processor, the memory system, and the input / output controller, a processor, a memory system,
It includes an operating system that controls the operation of the I / O controller, and object-oriented control means that include means for associating a set of permissions with a method by determining the class that defines the method. Before in a runtime method to avoid the need to check authorization by tracing the method down to the defining class
Method invocation is determined. Inheritance of object attributes allows resolution of object protection as it pertains to granting or denying access to inherited methods.

An advantage of the present invention is that object security can be easily achieved by creating a secure metaclass that performs authorization checking before method dispatch.

[0024]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Next, referring to FIG. 1 and FIG.
The information processing system 10 and operating system environment of the present invention will be described.

The information processing system 10 includes a very powerful processor 12, a storage system 14, a system bus 16, and a display subsystem 18 for controlling a display device 20 all connected by a system bus 16. And a graphic work including a cursor control device 22 and an input / output controller 24.
It can be a station or the like. The information processing system 10 shown in FIG. 1 can be operated by a well-known commercially available multitasking operating system such as OS / 2 (OS / 2 is a registered trademark of IBM). One of the many tasks that the OS / 2 operating system controls when operating the information processing system 10.
One is the execution of the SOMObjects program, a commercial product of IBM.

The methods and products of the present invention are described in SOMObjects
Can be incorporated into programs.

One of the important aspects of an object oriented system is to secure objects,
Therefore, object / method granularity access control can be enforced. This involves checking access control in the before method.

The present invention uses distributed SOM (DSOM) and security SOM (SSO) (in the address space ORB).
M) can be efficiently carried out.

The method by which the user specifies the security is
This is a method of specifying the following constraints when searching for class objects. Name: secure Value: Boolean indicating if the object is protected by access control checks Name: ACL Value: access control list if secure == TRUE

If the granularity is per method, then coercion can be performed on each method invocation or when the reference is first obtained (a capability approach). The present invention provides forcing when calling a method.

The object diagram of FIG. 3 shows secure object inheritance. By inheriting attributes from the secure object, the object becomes secure. This is before / when any method is called on an instance of that class, and to allow access to that object from there.
It guarantees that control is given to the security of the after metaclass.

In addition, an authorization policy must be specified for that class and instance. Regarding the permission policy, U.S. Patent Application No. 08/582271 (AT9-
95-112).

The before / after metaclasses are constructed in the order in which the instance classes are specified in the inheritance tree. The preferred embodiment of the present invention uses a left-to-right inheritance priority. Therefore, to ensure that authorization is performed before any other before / metaclass, we need to ensure that the class is inherited at the left edge of the hierarchy. (See FIG. 4)

In FIG. 4, the class inheritance for the secure runtime object is shown. The runtime consists of two main objects, the system authorization policy (SAP) and the ACL manager. SAP inherits from the Security Authorization :: SAP interface, which inherits from the Security Authorization :: SAO interface (SAO is the system authorization oracle). S
The AP interface provides support for managing access policies, and the SAO interface provides support for validating access to object groups.

The ACL manager is used to manipulate stored ACL information, including evaluation of access requests against stored ACL values. Also, ACL
The manager encapsulates the format in ACL storage. Class inheritance for registered security server objects is shown in the object diagram of FIG. The basic object from the perspective of authorization is the registered object. The registration object is for the associated native or extended support system for permission management. The only important thing about the registration object is that it be implemented as a single-instance metaclass and that it be inherited from the secure object to ensure its operation.

The structure of the secure object process is shown in the object diagram of FIG. As aforementioned,
Each secure object is an instance of the secure metaclass. Also, the secure metaclass is secure
It will ensure that all access to the object is validated. This is done through the use of SAP objects and ACL managers.

There is a single SAP object for each process obtained from the runtime module. AC
The L manager is instantiated by SAP based on the object group information associated with the secure object.

The structure of the security server process is shown in the object diagram of FIG. Since the registration object is a secure object, the security server process contains one SAP / SAO and one or more ACL manager objects to control access to the registration object itself. Furthermore, the registered object itself is SAP / SAO
Objects and ACL managers through extensions are used to manage access policy information to a particular group of objects. Finally, the registration object is typically a user registration by a unique user registration service for the unique user registration service and an object group
Interfaces the repository with the secure class repository.

While specific embodiments of the present invention have been described herein for purposes of illustration, it should be noted that various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention.

Accordingly, the scope of the invention is limited only by the claims and their equivalents.

In summary, the following matters are disclosed regarding the configuration of the present invention.

(1) A method for controlling access to an object in an information processing system using object-oriented technology, wherein the object inherits one or more security attributes of the object from a class that draws a lineage. And associating a set of permissions with a method, and comparing the set of permissions with an access control list to allow access to the object. (2) The step of associating a set of permissions with a method traces the method down to the defining class and before in the runtime method to avoid permission checking.
The method according to (1) above, further comprising: determining a method invocation. (3) The method according to (1) above, wherein the step of associating a set of permissions with a method further comprises the step of determining a class defining the method. (4) The method according to (1) above, wherein the step of controlling access further comprises the step of dispatching a method called when the comparing step indicates an authorized access to a protected class. . (5) A computer-readable medium including means for controlling access to an object in an information processing system using object-oriented technology, wherein the means for controlling the object from a class in which the object draws a lineage. Includes means for inheriting one or more security attributes, means for associating a set of permissions with a method, and means for comparing a set of permissions with an access control list to enable access to an object. A computer-readable medium characterized in that. (6) It is characterized in that the means for controlling access further includes means for tracing a method up to a definition class and means for determining a before method invocation by a runtime method in order to avoid a permission check. Above (5)
A computer readable medium as described in. (7) The means for associating a set of permissions with a method comprises:
The computer-readable medium according to (5) above, further comprising means for determining a class defining a method. (8) The method according to (5) above, wherein the means for controlling access further includes means for dispatching a method called when the means for comparing indicates an authorized access to a protection class. Computer readable medium. (9) An information processing system using object-oriented technology for controlling access to an object, comprising: a processor, a memory system, an input / output controller for controlling an input / output device, a processor, a memory Defines the bus that connects the system and I / O controller, the operating system that controls the operation of the processor, memory system, and I / O controller, the means by which the object inherits the security attributes of the object from the class that draws the lineage, and the method Determining the class to perform, including means for associating a set of permissions with a method, and means for comparing the set of permissions with an access control list to enable access to the object. Information processing system. (10) Before tracing the method up to the definition class and the runtime method to avoid authorization check
The information processing system according to (9) above, further including means for determining a method call. (11) The information processing system according to (9) above, further including means for dispatching a method called when the comparing means indicates a permitted access to a protection class.

[Brief description of drawings]

1 is a block diagram of a system for performing the method according to the invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an operating system platform and system object model program supporting the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an object diagram showing an inheritance hierarchy for a secure object according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an object diagram showing an inheritance hierarchy for the secure runtime according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an object diagram showing an inheritance hierarchy for a registered security server object according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is an object diagram showing the structure of the secure object process according to the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an object diagram showing the structure of a secure server process according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 information processing system 12 processor 14 storage system 16 system bus 18 display subsystem 20 display device 22 cursor control device 24 input / output controller

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ───Continued from the front page (72) Inventor George Robert Brackley The Surd United States 78729 Austin Austin, Texas Stillforist 13007 (72) Inventor Anthony Jay Naderlin United States 78759 Austin Austin Duval, Texas・ Road 3201 Aperture 623

Claims (11)

[Claims] 1. A method for controlling access to an object in an information processing system using object-oriented technology, the method comprising:
Inheriting one or more security attributes, associating a set of permissions with the method, and comparing the set of permissions with an access control list to allow access to the object. A method characterized by. 2. The step of associating a set of permissions with a method includes tracing the method down to a defining class and befo on a runtime method to avoid permission checking.
The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of determining the invocation of the re method. 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of associating a set of permissions with a method further comprises the step of determining the class that defines the method. 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of controlling access further comprises the step of dispatching a method called when the comparing step indicates authorized access to a protected class. Method. 5. A computer readable medium including means for controlling access to an object in an information processing system using object oriented technology, the means for controlling comprising: One of the objects
Including means for inheriting one or more security attributes, means for associating a set of permissions with a method, and means for comparing a set of permissions with an access control list to enable access to an object. A computer-readable medium characterized by. 6. The means for controlling access is a method for tracing a method down to a defining class and a befo in a runtime method to avoid authorization checking.
The computer-readable medium of claim 5, further comprising means for determining invocation of the re method. 7. The computer-readable medium of claim 5, wherein the means for associating a set of permissions with a method further comprises means for determining the class that defines the method. 8. The method of claim 5, wherein the means for controlling access further comprises means for dispatching the invoked method when the comparing means indicates authorized access to a protected class. Computer-readable medium. 9. An information processing system using object-oriented technology to control access to an object, comprising: a processor, a memory system, an input / output controller for controlling input / output devices, a processor, A bus that connects the memory system and the I / O controller, an operating system that controls the operations of the processor, the memory system, and the I / O controller, a means for inheriting the security attributes of the object from a class in which the object draws a line, and a method By associating a set of permissions with a method by determining the class that defines the, and comparing the set of permissions with an access control list to allow access to the object. Information processing system. 10. A means to trace a method down to a defining class and a befo in a runtime method to avoid authorization checking.
The information processing system according to claim 9, further comprising: a unit that determines whether the re method is called. 11. The information processing system according to claim 9, further comprising means for dispatching a method called when the comparing means indicates an authorized access to a protection class.