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Toward strong, usable access control for shared distributed data

Publication ,  Conference
Mazurek, ML; Liang, Y; Melicher, W; Sleeper, M; Bauer, L; Ganger, GR; Gupta, N; Reiter, MK
Published in: Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014
January 1, 2014

As non-expert users produce increasing amounts of personal digital data, usable access control becomes critical. Current approaches often fail, because they insufficiently protect data or confuse users about policy specification. This paper presents Penumbra, a distributed file system with access control designed to match users’ mental models while providing principled security. Penumbra’s design combines semantic, tag-based policy specification with logic-based access control, flexibly supporting intuitive policies while providing high assurance of correctness. It supports private tags, tag disagreement between users, decentralized policy enforcement, and unforgeable audit records. Penumbra’s logic can express a variety of policies that map well to real users’ needs. To evaluate Penumbra’s design, we develop a set of detailed, realistic case studies drawn from prior research into users’ access-control preferences. Using microbenchmarks and traces generated from the case studies, we demonstrate that Penumbra can enforce users’ policies with overhead less than 5% for most system calls.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014

ISBN

9781931971089

Publication Date

January 1, 2014

Start / End Page

89 / 103
 

Citation

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Mazurek, M. L., Liang, Y., Melicher, W., Sleeper, M., Bauer, L., Ganger, G. R., … Reiter, M. K. (2014). Toward strong, usable access control for shared distributed data. In Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014 (pp. 89–103).
Mazurek, M. L., Y. Liang, W. Melicher, M. Sleeper, L. Bauer, G. R. Ganger, N. Gupta, and M. K. Reiter. “Toward strong, usable access control for shared distributed data.” In Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014, 89–103, 2014.
Mazurek ML, Liang Y, Melicher W, Sleeper M, Bauer L, Ganger GR, et al. Toward strong, usable access control for shared distributed data. In: Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014. 2014. p. 89–103.
Mazurek, M. L., et al. “Toward strong, usable access control for shared distributed data.” Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014, 2014, pp. 89–103.
Mazurek ML, Liang Y, Melicher W, Sleeper M, Bauer L, Ganger GR, Gupta N, Reiter MK. Toward strong, usable access control for shared distributed data. Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014. 2014. p. 89–103.

Published In

Proceedings of the 12th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, FAST 2014

ISBN

9781931971089

Publication Date

January 1, 2014

Start / End Page

89 / 103