Currently, eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) has becoming the standard for implementing access control policies and consequently more attention is dedicated to testing the correctness of XACML policies. In particular, coverage measures can be adopted for assessing test strategy effectiveness in exercising the policy elements. This study introduces a set of XACML coverage criteria and describes the access control infrastructure, based on a monitor engine, enabling the coverage criterion selection and the on-line tracing of the testing activity. Examples of infrastructure usage and of assessment of different test strategies are provided.
Finally, concerning the adoption of monitoring facilities for coverage assessment, the work in @cite_16 represents a preliminary attempt of an infrastructure for enabling coverage criterion selection and policy coverage assessment analysis. Several general-purpose monitoring proposals are currently available, which can be mainly divided into two groups: those that are embedded in the execution engine such as @cite_21 @cite_23 and those that can be integrated into the execution framework as an additional component such for instance @cite_14 . Among the additional monitor facility in this paper we refer to the monitoring framework called Glimpse @cite_7 , which is extremely flexible and adaptable to various scenarios and SOA architecture patterns.
@cite_14 @cite_7 @cite_21 @cite_23 @cite_16
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The issue of data security and privacy in multi-cloud based environments requires different solutions for implementing and enforcing security policies. In these environments, many security aspects must be faced, such as security-by-design, risk management, data privacy and isolation, and vulnerability scans. Moreover, it also becomes necessary to have a system that interrelates and operates all security controls which are configured and executed independently on each component of the application (service) being secured and monitored. In addition, thanks to the large diffusion of cloud computing systems, new attacks are emerging, so threat detection systems play a key role in the security schemes, identifying possible attacks. These systems handle an enormous volume of information as they detect unknown malicious activities by monitoring different events from different points of observation, as well as adapting to new attack strategies and considering techniques to detect malicious behaviors and react accordingly. In modern pervasive dynamic and eternal systems, software must be able to self-organize its structure and self-adapt its behavior to enhance its resilience and provide the desired quality of service. In this high-dynamic and unpredictable scenario, flexible and reconfigurable monitoring infrastructures become key instruments to verify at runtime functional and non-functional properties. In this paper, we propose a property-driven approach to runtime monitoring that is based on a comprehensive Property Meta-Model (PMM) and on a generic configurable monitoring infrastructure. PMM supports the definition of quantitative and qualitative properties in a machine-processable way making it possible to configure the monitors dynamically. Examples of implementation and applications of the proposed model-driven monitoring infrastructure are excerpted from the ongoing CONNECT European Project. In modern pervasive applications, it is important to validate access control mechanisms that are usually defined by means of the standard XACML language. Mutation analysis has been applied on access control policies for measuring the adequacy of a test suite. In this paper, we present a testing framework aimed at applying mutation analysis at the level of the Java based policy evaluation engine. A set of Java based mutation operators is selected and applied to the code of the Policy Decision Point (PDP). A first experiment shows the effectiveness of the proposed framework in assessing the fault detection of XACML test suites and confirms the efficacy of the application of code-based mutation operators to the PDP. In the last few years, a plethora of research has addressed security testing issues. Several commercial tools have emerged to provide security testing services. Software security testing goes beyond functional testing to reveal flaws and vulnerabilities in software design and behavior. Access control is a major pillar in computer security. This chapter pursues the goal of describing the landscape in the research area of access control testing. We provide an outline of the different existing research over the literature according to the taxonomy reflecting the different phases of common software testing processes (generation, selection, prioritization, quality assessment, regression). We also provide an outline of some existing initiatives that support usage control besides access control by testing obligation policies. Finally, we point out future research directions that emerge from the current research study. Through this work, we aim at providing useful guidelines for software testers to improve the current trends in access control testing. Testing access control policies relies on their execution on a security engine and the evaluation of the correct responses. Coverage measures can be adopted to know which parts of the policy are most exercised. This paper proposes an access control infrastructure for enabling the coverage criterion selection, the monitoring of the policy execution and the analysis of the policy coverage assessment. The framework is independent from the policy specification language and does not require the instrumentation of the evaluation engine. We show an instantiation of the proposed infrastructure for assessing the XACML policy testing.