Role Reachability Analysis with Transitive Tags
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Solution Overview
Problem
In distributed systems, managing access control policies becomes complex due to transitive tag behavior, leading to potential unexpected privilege escalation, as subtle interactions between role assumption steps and tag constraints can result in unauthorized access to sensitive resources.
Innovation Solution
An automated access control analyzer performs symbolic reasoning to analyze role reachability using a graph with nodes representing roles and edges representing role assumption transitions, conditioned on key-value attributes, including transitive tags, to identify potential misconfigurations and notify relevant users or accounts of security risks.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If automated analysis of role reachability with transitive tags is implemented, then security against privilege escalation is improved, but computational complexity and analysis time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The analysis system segments the role reachability problem into distinct components: graph construction from access control policies, transitive tag propagation analysis, and privilege escalation detection. This segmentation allows each component to be processed independently using optimized algorithms, reducing overall computational complexity while maintaining security analysis effectiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary construction of the role reachability graph and pre-computation of transitive tag closures before actual security analysis. By preparing these data structures in advance, the system avoids repeated expensive computations during security checks, thereby reducing analysis time and computational complexity for subsequent security evaluations.
2Measurement precision
If comprehensive role reachability analysis is performed, then detection of unauthorized access paths is improved, but analysis time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The analysis system implements feedback mechanisms that use results from partial analyses to guide subsequent analysis steps. When privilege escalation paths are detected or the analysis determines certain role combinations cannot lead to escalation, the system uses this feedback to prune the search space, avoiding unnecessary analysis of impossible paths and reducing overall analysis time while maintaining comprehensive detection capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs partial analysis by focusing computational resources on the most critical role assumption paths and transitive tag combinations. Rather than exhaustively analyzing every possible role transition in equal detail, the system identifies and prioritizes analysis of paths that are most likely to lead to privilege escalation, achieving high detection accuracy with reduced analysis time by analyzing only the necessary portions of the role reachability space.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for analysis of role reachability with transitive tags are disclosed. An access control analyzer determines a graph including nodes and edges. The nodes represent roles in a provider network hosting resources. The roles are associated with access control policies granting or denying access to individual resources. One or more of the access control policies grant or deny access based (at least in part) on key-value attributes. The access control analyzer determines, based (at least in part) on a role reachability analysis of the graph, whether a first role can assume a second role using role assumption steps for a particular state of the attributes. The attributes may include transitive attributes that persist during the role assumption steps.