Trust Management Systems and Methods
First Claim
1. In a computer-implemented trust management system, a method for controlling access to a computing resource, the method including:
- obtaining a request for the computing resource;
obtaining a group of certificates, each certificate expressing at least one authorization by at least one principal;
identifying a set of principals associated with the certificates,initializing a state associated with each principal;
evaluating a certificate as a function of the state associated with one or more of the principals;
updating the state of one or more of the principals if the result of said evaluating step indicates that the state of a principal should be changed; and
repeating said evaluating and updating steps until a fixpoint is reached or until a predefined principal is found to authorize the request.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention provides systems and methods for making efficient trust management decisions. A trust management engine is provided that processes requests for system resources, authorizations or certificates, and the identity of one or more root authorities that are ultimately responsible for granting or denying the requests. To determine whether a request should be granted, the trust management engine identifies a set principals from whom authorization may flow, and interprets each of the certificates as a function of the state of one or more of the principals. The processing logic iteratively evaluates the functions represented by the certificates, updates the states of the principals, and repeats this process until a reliable determination can be made as to whether the request should be granted or denied. The certificates may be evaluated until the state of the root authority indicates that the request should be granted, or until further evaluation of the certificates is ineffective in changing the state of the principals.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. In a computer-implemented trust management system, a method for controlling access to a computing resource, the method including:
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obtaining a request for the computing resource; obtaining a group of certificates, each certificate expressing at least one authorization by at least one principal; identifying a set of principals associated with the certificates, initializing a state associated with each principal; evaluating a certificate as a function of the state associated with one or more of the principals; updating the state of one or more of the principals if the result of said evaluating step indicates that the state of a principal should be changed; and repeating said evaluating and updating steps until a fixpoint is reached or until a predefined principal is found to authorize the request. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A computer program product for making trust management determinations, the computer program product including:
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computer code for obtaining a request to perform a predefined action; computer code for obtaining a group of authorizations for the predefined action, one or more of the authorizations in the group being a function of the authorization state of one or more principals; computer code for identifying a set of principals associated with the authorizations and for initializing a state associated with each principal; computer code for evaluating authorizations from the set of authorizations using the state associated with each principal; computer code for updating the state of the principals; computer code for causing repeated execution of said computer code for evaluating authorizations and for updating the state of the principals until a fixpoint is reached or until a predefined principal is deemed to authorize the request; and a computer-readable medium for storing the computer codes. - View Dependent Claims (8)
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9. A system for controlling access to electronic content or processing resources, the system comprising:
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means for receiving a request from a requesting principal to access a piece of electronic content or a processing resource; means for collecting a set of one or more certificates relating to the request, the requesting principal, or the electronic content or processing resource; means for identifying a root principal from whom authorization is needed in order to grant the request; means for performing at least a portion of a least fixpoint computation over said certificates to determine whether the root principal has authorized access to the piece of electronic content or processing resource by the requesting principal; and means for granting access to the electronic content or processing resource if the least fixpoint computation indicates that the root principal has authorized said access.
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10. A system for controlling access to electronic resources, the system comprising:
a first computer system for processing requests for system resources, the first computer system comprising; a network interface for receiving digital certificates from other systems and for receiving requests to access electronic resources; a memory for storing electronic resources and one or more certificates relating thereto; and a trust management engine for processing digital certificates and requests for electronic resources, and for making access control decisions by performing least fixpoint computations using said digital certificates. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A method for performing trust management computations, the method including:
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collecting a group of certificates, each certificate including at least one authorization; expressing authorizations using a structure that satisfies certain predefined properties; expressing each certificate as a function, wherein each function possesses one or more properties sufficient to ensure that a set of authorizations will have a fixpoint; computing a fixpoint of the authorizations, or an approximation thereof; making a trust management decision using the result of said computing step. - View Dependent Claims (19)
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- 18. A method as in 17, in which the structure comprises a lattice.
Specification