Authorization Policy Analysis Using SMT Symbolic Evaluation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Customers face challenges in managing complex access control policies for dynamic provider network-based applications, as each service requires different configurations, increasing the complexity of governing access controls, and existing policy languages either sacrifice expressiveness for performance or analyzability.
Innovation Solution
A policy language system and method that supports authorization policy analysis by reducing policies to Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) for evaluation, allowing for expressive policies with fine-grained permissions, and an authorization engine that uses a balanced syntax and semantics to ensure efficient and safe authorization decisions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If existing policy languages are used to manage access control policies, then policy configuration can be performed, but expressiveness is sacrificed for performance or analyzability
Solution Approach 1:
The policy language is segmented into distinct syntactic components (principal, action, resource, condition) that can be independently parsed and evaluated. This segmentation allows the system to maintain high expressiveness through comprehensive policy syntax while achieving efficient performance through targeted evaluation of only relevant policy components for each authorization request.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of policy evaluation by using symbolic execution and SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories) solving. Instead of traditional interpretation methods, policies are transformed into logical formulas that can be efficiently solved, maintaining both expressiveness and performance through mathematical optimization.
2Adaptability or versatility
If existing policy languages are used to manage access control policies, then policy configuration can be performed, but analyzability deteriorates due to complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary policy analysis layer that sits between policy configuration and execution. This layer includes automated analysis tools that can verify policy correctness, detect conflicts, and validate security requirements before policies are deployed, thereby improving analyzability without limiting expressiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces manual policy analysis and verification with automated computational methods. Symbolic execution engines and SMT solvers automatically analyze policy logic, detect security issues, and verify correctness, substituting complex manual analysis processes with efficient automated systems that improve both analyzability and reliability.
3Manufacturing precision
If manual policy configuration is performed for each service, then fine-grained control is achieved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal policy language and evaluation framework that can be applied across multiple provider network services. This single framework handles diverse authorization scenarios (IAM, resource access, service permissions) uniformly, reducing management complexity while maintaining fine-grained control through the expressive policy syntax and conditional logic.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for authorization policy analysis. A policy analyzer answers first-order questions about authorization policies by reducing the policies to Satisfiability modulo theories (SMT). Input to the analyzer includes a policy to be analyzed and a schema for that policy. If the policy passes strict validation against the schema, then the analyzer symbolically evaluates the policy to encode its semantics as an SMT expression. The SMT expression is used for formulate a desired query about policy behavior such as, for example, if there is any input on which two policies both evaluate to true. The reduction to SMT produces a quantifier-free formula in a combination of decidable theories to support large scale deployments. This reduction is achieved by focusing the analysis on policies that pass strict validation, rather than attempting to analyze arbitrary policies.