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Subject: Re: [xacml] New core and multiple resource profile and hierarchical
Thanks Rich for the response, See responses inline. Rich.Levinson wrote: > Hi Erik, > > Thanks for the input. I think there are still some fundamental > misunderstandings of what exactly the issue is that I have been > raising here (maybe not, maybe I am misunderstanding something in > which case, I will be happy to close the issue, but not there yet). I > will address your comments below after prelim comment: > > First, for people who have been observing this seemingly endless > sequence of extremely detailed emails, please rest assured that I > believe there is a significant issue that needs to be addressed. Here > are a couple introductory points to consider: > > * As a result of the natural complexity of the problem of > identifying the applicable policies to apply to a requested > resource that can be known to policies under more than one > "normative hierarchical name" (where the "hierarchical" name > either contains the hierarchical info internally, as in the case > of URI, or whether the name is an unstructured unique string > that uniquely identifies the resource in some external resource > collection, whereby the contexthandler before submitting the > request is able to identify and collect all the relevant names > of "hierarchical" ancestor nodes to the requested resource > node), these emails have had to contain enough detail to address > some specific somewhat subtle characteristics of the process for > collecting the list of ancestor nodes. > * To further help frame the issue, it should be commonly > understood that when a PEP submits a request, it is first > handled by a context handler, which is defined in XACML to > handle input requests as follows: > o "converts decision requests in the native request format > to the XACML canonical form" > * Therefore the context handler needs to know, given a requested > resource, how to assemble the list of ancestors for that > resource to submit with the request as part of its > responsibility of converting the request to "XACML canonical form". > * The current document, before the modifications I made, had > effectively defined two methods of ancestor collection: > o an explicit method: defined by the algorithms in section 3.2 > o an implicit method: implied by the definition in section > 2.2 of how to form a URI that could be used with the > hierarchical profile, and by the anyURI methods described > in section 4.3 intended to be used by policies that apply > to resources identified using the guidelines of section 2.2 > I see the value of the URI scheme, and I think we should add it to the profile as a separate section. For those cases where it works, it is simpler than the full DAG scheme. > * As it turns out, as can be understood in detail by reviewing the > chain(s) of emails on this subject in Jan-Feb-Mar 2009, > o the explicit methods in section 3.2 imply that the > resources are collected in a manner that assumes that > policies will be written with the "mindset" of protecting > a hierarchical resource structured as a DAG. > o the implicit methods of sections 2.2/4.3 effectively imply > that the resources are collected in a manner that assumes > that policies will be written with the "mindset" of > protecting a hierarchical resource structured as a forest. > (For example, if a node has 2 normative URIs, then it is a > member of 2 trees in the forest - policies written using > anyURI will be applicable if their scope includes either > of the 2 normative URIs > Are you referring to the original profile, or the latest draft? I think we should forget about the original profile for now. It is clearly not consistent, so let's focus on what we want the new profile to be. :-) When we talk about what we want the profile to be like, I think it should support three schemes: the "ancestor scheme", the "XML doc scheme" and the new "URI scheme" which you have proposed. > * This is roughly the point I was at when I started raising this > issue. The first thing I noticed was that there were effectively > 2 different ancestor collection methods at work, which had the > following curious properties: > o the methods in section 3.2 involve collecting ancestors of > the resource that are not "direct" ancestors, in the sense > that if the resource's parent has a parent that is not > directly connected then policies associated with that > ancestor apply to the requested resource > + To use the common "sibling" terminology, a "direct" > ancestor would be a bloodline ancestor, such as a > grandparent. In "indirect" ancestor would be > equivalent to a "step-grandparent", i.e. one not > connected by bloodline, but that established a > relation with the bloodline parent "after the fact" > and now has an "indirect" relation with the > "step-grandchild". > o So the question which "lights all the fires" on this issue > is whether a "step-grandparent" should have an equal > relation with the requested resource as a bloodline > "grandparent". > o It turns out that with the DAG model there is no way for > the context handler to differentiate between > "grandparents" and "step-grandparents", so the answer is > ALWAYS that these are treated equally. > o By comparison, it turns out that "by default" (i.e. the > contexthandler just collects the set of URIs from the > resource with no need to search for ancestors because all > the needed URIs are right there) using URIs that only > grandparents will be selected. "step-grandparents" could > be obtained if desired, but simple out of the box URIs > give you only the bloodline ancestors. > I don't think the profile should support telling apart the "bloodline" and "step-grandparents". They should all count as ancestors. Telling them apart is probably not worth the effort and extra complexity which would be introduced. > * The reason I am concerned about this issue is that from a > security perspective, it makes little sense to me to force > commonly understood hierarchies, such as organization charts, > geographic breakdowns of organization operations, whether within > a building or around the world, to suddenly have policies that > are intended only to apply to the resources within these > specified domains, suddenly apply to resources outside of these > domains. > I don't understand this. Could you try go give an example? > * Similarly, resources within these domains will find themselves > subject to policies applied to resources outside of these domains. > o For example, if I am a manager in the United States, and > there is a policy that says employees in the United States > may treat the 4th of July as a holiday, then anyone > outside the United States who has any superior inside the > United States will be subject to this policy. > o Why? Because the resources are treated as a DAG. DAGs do > not deal with resources individually, they only deal with > subtrees. > I don't see why this would happen. If you write a policy which says that "every one belonging to the organization of manager Rich may have a holiday on the 4th of July", then naturally that would apply to even those outside the US if they belong to the organization of Rich. If that's not what you intended, don't write such a policy. :-) Instead you should write a policy which says that everyone who has an attribute "location=US" may have a holiday on the 4th of July. Not use a hierarchy which does not correspond to the effect you intend. > With that background, let me address Erik's points: > > > Erik Rissanen wrote: >> Rich and TC, >> >> I have reviewed the draft you have posted (wd 05-02) as well as the >> recent discussion on the list, and I think the draft needs some more >> work. >> >> I agree with you that the old profile had lots of ambiguities and >> small errors in it, and I think you have done a good job at spotting >> them and you have improved the text in many places. >> >> However, I also think that the new work you have added in there >> complicates matters needlessly. There are two reasons for that: >> >> 1. You try to write the profile so it works with multiple >> intersecting hieararchies. I think that is the wrong way to do it. It >> should be specified for a single hierarchy only. If you need to apply >> it on multiple hierarchies, the way to do it is to preprocess the >> hierarchies by merging them into a single hierarchy. This joint >> hierarchy also needs to meet some consistency criteria, or the whole >> thing becomes meaningless and inconsistent. See more about that below. > This is an invalid assertion. I leave the profile unchanged, except > for distinguishing the DAG and forest/polyarchy distinctions. I don't see that there is a distinction which is relevant to the profile. I think the "ancestor scheme" should be defined for a DAG. Forests and others which are special cases of a DAG would be supported as special cases. I don't think the profile should support any form of hierarchy which is not a DAG because that would expand the scope to more complex models which we (or at least I ;-)) don't know how to handle. > The DAG is inherently is multiple "overlapping" hierarchies that can > be combined into a "single multiroot hierarchy" (see ref prev email) > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph#Properties > The forest is inherently multiple "intersecting" hierarchies, that can > be combined into a "single multiroot disjoint hierarchy" identical in > every way to the DAG except that: > > 1. it retains the identity of the multiple hierarchies as its > disjoint property > 2. it is not restricted from having "cycles" as long as the circuit > travels over at least segments from 2 disjoint hierarchies > I don't understand the above. A DAG by definition has no cycles. And a DAG is not inherently multiple hierarchies. It may be the case that multiple hierarchies of certain limited form may in general be mapped into a single DAG, but I don't think it is primarily relevant to the profile. I think we should keep the profile algorithms constrained to a single DAG. We can add explanatory text about how some special case hierarchies can be mapped to a DAG. But we should not try to define algorithms for multiple hierarchies because the algorithms become more complex to define, and in come cases the combination of multiple hierarchies won't lead to a consistent DAG. For instance, consider the following: Resource A has normative "names" http://example.com/res/A and "res_1234". Resource B has normative "names" http://example.com/res/A/B and "foo_56". There exist two hierarchies. In the first hierarchy http://example.com/res/A is the parent of http://example.com/res/A/B. In the second hierarchy "foo_56" is the parent of "res_1234". These two hierarchies cannot be combined into a DAG, since the two hierarchies contradict each other. And we should not attempt to handle these cases in the profile. Instead the profile should require that there is a single consistent DAG which forms the hierarchy. > As should be clear from above description, and all previous emails on > this subject, the preprocessing is done by creating a joint hierarchy. > The only difference between the DAG and the forest is that with the > DAG, potentially useful information about the joint hierarchy is > thrown away, with the forest it is kept. All is done before > contexthandler submits request based on what contexthandler is capable > of doing with the resource collection of which the requested resource > is a member. Yes, I agree that the mapping to ancestor attributes throws away information. But I think that is a correct limitation for what we define as the scope of the profile. With the profile we intend only to support those policies which are possible to express with the limited set of information about the hierarchy. For instance, we can express that a policy should apply to all descendants to a given resource. However, we cannot express, for instance, that it should apply only three steps down the hierarchy, but not deeper. > > Unfortunately, this statement appears to characterize the conceptual > gap on this issue: > > "This joint hierarchy also needs to meet some consistency > criteria, or the whole thing becomes meaningless and inconsistent." > > All one needs to do is peruse the emails to quickly realize that it is > the profile that mixes the DAG/forest concepts, which renders the > existing spec "meaningless and inconsistent" and that my effort has > been to separate these concepts in order to establish meaning and > consistency to the contents of the spec. Yes, I agree that the old profile mixes concepts such as DAGs and forests incorrectly. We need to fix that. >> >> 2. You use the "root" concept. That is actually not required at all. >> As you have realized, the concept of a root in a DAG becomes messy to >> define and handle. I think we should just drop any reference to a >> "root" in the whole profile. All we need are "ancestors", and those >> are found by following the edges upwards. Not down from the root, so >> the root doesn't have to be defined. (In fact, in a DAG, there is not >> necessarily a unique root anyway.) > DAG is a directed graph. If you keep following any parent relationship > recursively from the requested node you will come to one of the roots > of the DAG. If you chose different parents along the way you will come > to a different root, in general. In a DAG, it doesn't matter from the > perspective of the requested node, all roots are functionally > equivalent in the sense that there is no inherent distinction as to > the status of one root vs another. Yes, it is possible to define roots. But what I say is that they are not relevant. We don't need the root in the profile. We only need to define ancestors to be able to express the kind of policies the profile is intended: policies which apply to sections of the hierarchy consisting of descendants of a given node. > > In the forest model, you can have exactly the same layout as any DAG. > And you can traverse the same recursive paths to any of the same > roots. The only difference along the way is at each step you know > whether you are proceeding along the same hierarchy as in your > previous step or whether you are switching to another hierarchy. > > In the world of security, these hierarchical paths are commonly known > as "lines of authority". Generally, in security applications the > notion of "clear lines of authority" is desirable, and the notion of > "tangled lines of authority" is detrimental. This is precisely the > distinction of forest (clear lines) and DAG (tangled lines). >> >> Finally, I think we should write the normative sections so they >> target a DAG only. Trees and forests follow as special cases. We can >> add explanatory text to make this clear, but the normative parts >> become much simpler if we don't define many different types of >> hierarchies. > Obviously, from my above remarks, if we were to target "only" one of > DAG or forest, I would choose forest because > > * forest represents "clear lines of authority" for security > applications > * URI as recommended in section 2.2 already provides it out of the box > > and I would not choose DAG, because > > * DAG represents uncontrolled ambiguous lines of authority > * DAG is intended for sub-tree, or whole "sub-assembly at a time" > type of operations, which is why it is popular in source code > control systems. If we think global enterprises can be modeled > as special case of source code control system then DAG will be > great, otherwise, a forest is needed. > I would choose to target a DAG since it is more general than a forest. > Bottom line: I think when the dust and smoke is removed from this > issue, we are left with what kind of model do we want for resources: a > highly structured model as in forest, or a more loosely structured, > "social network" type of model such as DAG. > > Or we could follow the path I have represented in the profile which is > that you can choose either, as appropriate, for specific subset of the > overall enterprise resources. If we do DAG for the ancestor scheme and tree for the URI scheme then we cover both cases. Best regards, Erik > Thanks, > Rich > >> >> I propose the following changes: >> >> - First, a small nitpick. ;-) I don't like "Working draft 05-02". I >> think working drafts should progress 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on. It's >> confusing that there are several documents, all called working draft 5. >> >> - Remove all the new definitions of "polyarchy", etc. They are not >> needed. Use only the term "DAG". >> >> - Define a hierarchy as a DAG, where the nodes correspond to >> resources and the edges correspond to child-parent relationships. >> >> - Define that each node in the hierarchy has one or more "normative >> representations" (names). A normative representations is defined as >> an XACML datatype value instance, which is provided in the request >> (through the context handler or the PEP). A representation which is >> not provided in the request is not normative, and may not be >> referenced in policies. >> >> - This is actually already implied, but maybe worth stating: if one >> merges a number of hierarchies in the pre-processing step, the merged >> hiearchy must be consistent with respect to node >> representation/naming and the parent-child relationship. That is, if >> A and B are two representations of a node and C and D are >> representations of another node, and there is a relationship between >> the nodes, the same relationship applies to all >> representations/names. So all of the following would apply, not just >> some of them: A-C, A-D, B-C and B-D. I think the complexities in what >> you have done Rich is much due to that you have tried to cover >> hierarchies where this is not true. But those hierarchies are not >> internally consistent, so we cannot make them work. >> >> - The ancestors of a node are defined as simply the transitive >> closure of the parent-child relationship. >> >> Note that the above points imply that there is a single hierarchy >> which is a DAG. Also note that I don't make use of the term "root". >> It's not needed. >> >> - Add in a couple of examples with illustrations showing a simple >> tree formed DAG and a more complex DAG which is not a tree and show >> how the ancestors are found. >> >> - Remove section 1.1.1. It's not needed if we specify the algorithms >> on a sigle DAG only. >> >> - Make a separate section about the URI-only scheme, saying that "in >> some cases when the resources are represented as URIs, it may be >> possible to simply do matching on portions of the resource >> representations". Also make it clear that the PEP and PDP must agree >> on which scheme is used, or the policies won't work. >> >> - I think that a node may be represented by any XACML data type, like >> a string for instance, not just URIs. This is what the user posted to >> the comments list and requested that we change. >> >> - I think there are some problems with section 2.2. In particular, it >> should not say anything about UTF-8 encoding. That's already defined >> by the core schema and it's unicode consistency requirements. I think >> actually that we can drop the whole of section 2.2 and allow any form >> on the normative representations of nodes. There is no reason to >> restrict it to a particular form of a URI. (The section on the >> URI-based schema should of course contain some restrictions for how >> that scheme is made to work.) >> >> - We should not define a new identifier for a functionality named >> "...:forest:...". >> >> - There is no need to various subsections on multi-rooted hierarchies >> or polyarchies. See for instance 3.2.1 and 3.2.2. >> >> In short, I think we need very few changes compared to the original >> profile. We just need to clarify the terminology and definitions, put >> in a couple of illustrations, relax the data type restrictions and >> add a section of a URI matching based scheme as an alternative to the >> other two schemes. >> >> Best regards, >> Erik >> >> Rich.Levinson wrote: >>> Hi Erik, >>> >>> The hierarchical profile is ready for review as is. There are no >>> more changes planned. >>> >>> Note: The two added identifiers in section 2.2, >>> "...hierarchical:forest:non-xml-node-id" and 3.2.2, >>> "...hierarchical:forest:non-xml-node-req" are for convenience only >>> and the spec could be rephrased without them, if necessary. >>> >>> The profile is located at: >>> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=31407&wg_abbrev=xacml >>> >>> >>> The example that Hal requested, which provides further motivation >>> for the changes, as well as detailed explanatory technical >>> structure, is at: >>> http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xacml/200902/msg00058.html >>> >>> A fresh example of application of the profile using URIs that came >>> up yesterday on the xacml-users list is at: >>> http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xacml-users/200903/msg00001.html >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Rich >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Erik Rissanen wrote: >>>> All, >>>> >>>> I have posted new drafts of the core and the multiple resource >>>> profile. See the change logs and tracked changes for details. >>>> >>>> As far as I can tell, we don't have any open issues on the >>>> following specs: >>>> >>>> - Core >>>> - Multiple resource >>>> - Administration >>>> - Privacy >>>> - SAML >>>> - Dsig >>>> >>>> The hierarchical profile is being discussed currently and there was >>>> discussion about improving the RBAC profile. >>>> >>>> The proposed work on the RBAC profile seems in very early stages >>>> and the issue (policies about management of roles) is a major >>>> topic, so I propose that we don't bring this in 3.0. >>>> >>>> So, could we agree on a feature freeze on the above mentioned >>>> profiles? If so, all of the expect hierarchical are ready for >>>> review before going to committee draft. >>>> >>>> I also propose that if we don't get resolutions on the issues in >>>> the hierarchical profile soon and it would appear that there are >>>> major changes required, then we use the old version of that >>>> profile. However, my understanding is that Rich has pretty much >>>> completed the work on that. I haven't had the time to review it >>>> myself yet, but I will do so now. >>>> >>>> So, given the above, can we agree on the following? >>>> >>>> - everybody reviews the above mentioned profiles >>>> - We correct any mistakes >>>> - I will fix the metadata, references, namespaces, etc, >>>> - Go CD with the above >>>> >>>> One final issue: we need to update the acknowledgements section of >>>> the core. What goes in there? My name is not in there, and I would >>>> like to include it. :-) I presume that we keep all the old names, >>>> right? John Tolbert has requested to be added. Anybody else? >>>> >>>> Best regards, >>>> Erik >>>> >>>> >>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that >>>> generates this mail. Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at: >>>> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that >> generates this mail. Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at: >> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php
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