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Subject: Re: [xacml] wd-19 indeterminate policy target handling


Hi again, Paul, Erik, Hal, and TC:

I have spent some additional time looking at this problem and I am now leaning
toward leaving the spec as is, at least as far as I have analyzed it.

For anyone interested, my reassessment is based on the following:

The intention has always been to maintain consistency with XACML 2.0, while at
the same time enabling the "D" and "P" types of Indeterminates to propagate up
the PolicySet hierarchy in addition to the "DP" which was all that was propagated
up in 2.0, despite the fact that D and P were determined and used on the first
hop up, they were unnecessarily cut off at that point and information was lost.

It appears that I inadvertently lost sight of this big picture when looking at the
details from the top down. However, in order to go from the top down one
has to allow the existing algorithms on the bottom level to remain the same,
and obviously by assuming that the Rules do not need to be evaluated is a
direct contradiction with the existing XACML 2.0 algorithms which first evaluate
the Rule, then look directly at the effect later if there was an indeterminate.

Bottom line: I withdraw this sidebar issue, about not needing to evaluate the
Rules when the Policy or PolicySet Target produces an Indeterminate. In 2.0 the
spec was able to say that because it did not propagate the D and P properties up,
however, to do the complete job of propagating all the D and P properties, we
do need to evaluate the Rules, and the changes in the spec to this effect I believe
are correct.

    Thanks,
    Rich




On 5/6/2011 11:06 PM, rich levinson wrote:
4DC4B750.2070402@oracle.com" type="cite"> Hi Paul and TC,

I think the toothpaste is out of the tube on this one: i.e. I think too much has been
invested in the analysis for one member to unilaterally shut down the issue by
"withdrawal".  In any event, that's my opinion, but, regardless, based on
yesterday's mtg, I believe there is more to be said on this issue, and hopefully
we can channel it to a clean resolution.

That being said, following is additional analysis I have done and some conclusions that
I believe we can reach agreement on, and that I think I can describe in terms that everyone
can follow (for "clarity" I will just add an "s" for the plural of "Policy"). There are 2 arguments
I would like to make.

Argument 1:
  • First, there are 3 "types" of Policys:
    • Policys{P} where all Rules have Effect="Permit" and therefore
      these Policys can never return a "Deny".
    • Policys{D} where all Rules have Effect="Deny" and therefore
      these Policys can never return a "Permit"
    • Policys{DP} where there are a mix of Rules, some of which are "Permit",
      and some of which are "Deny", and therefore, there is no apriori way
      to look at such a Policy and know whether or not it can return either
      a Permit or a Deny.
  • Therefore, the 3 types of Policys each have an inherent property, which
    can be determined simply by inspection of the Policy w/o regard to
    evaluation of any Attributes.
    • In fact, 2 out of 3 of the types retain their "property" regardless of
      evaluation of the attributes.
      i.e. Policy{P} is always Policy{P}, it can never change its property and
      become either Policy{D} or Policy{DP}
      i.e. same can be said for Policy{D}
      I would therefore refer to these as "static properties"
    • The third type Policy{DP} has a run-time characteristic, where if
      current values of the Attributes happen to exclude all the Rules
      of either D or P, then the current run-time "property" of the Policy{DP}
      for a single evaluation can effectively become either Policy{P} or Policy{D}.
      On subsequent evaluations the Policy{DP} can again by happenstance
      become any one of the 3 types.
      I would therefore consider this a "runtime property" if we allow its
      definition to be subject to Attribute evaluation.
Therefore, I think we can say that the problem we are discussing reduces to only the
evaluation of Policy{DP} elements.

We can then ask whether we want our combining algorithms to be subject to runtime
values of Attributes that on any given evaluation can cause a Policy{DP} to become a
Policy{D} or a Policy{P}, thus rendering the property of the Policy indeterminate
until runtime values are plugged in.

I would also suggest that it is this indeterminacy, which would cause Policys not to
be comparable for "equivalence", because the Policys themselves have a built-in
uncertainty depending on how one regards this property.

I would also suggest that for the purpose of "equivalence" this runtime characteristic could
be considered a "performance optimization", which could be a property of the Policy Engine,
whereas the inherent D and P properties can be considered a Policy language characteristic
independent of runtime, which could be included in an equivalence algorithm.

Argument 2:

There is one additional argument I would like to add for consideration. In XACML 2.0,
there is a statement in section 7.10 for Policy Evaluation, which says:
'If the target value is "No-match" or “Indeterminate” then the policy value SHALL be
 “NotApplicable” or “Indeterminate”, respectively, regardless of the value of the rules.
 For these cases, therefore, the rules need not be evaluated.'
By comparison, in XACML 3.0, WD 19, the corresponding statement in section 7.11 has
been modified to say:
'If the target value is "No-match" then the policy value SHALL be
 "NotApplicable", regardless of the value of the rules.
 For this case, therefore, the rules need not be evaluated.'
The "Indeterminate" part of this statement has been modified to say:
'If the target value is "Indeterminate", then the policy value SHALL be
 determined as specified in Table 7, in section 7.13.'
Therefore, the "meaning" of the spec has been changed, because in order to select
an entry in Table 7, now the rules do have to be evaluated, which is not obvious
unless one does a very careful and complete reading of the changes that are
being proposed.

Additional Consideration:

One other side effect that I think is of concern, is that if we allow the Policy property
(P, D, or DP) to be subject to runtime determination then when an Indeterminate is
obtained at the top of the tree, then it would be necessary to evaluate the complete
subtree in order to determine what this property is. By comparison, the static property
can be determined at any time by processing the tree once and recording the property
for all subsequent evaluations.

My Conclusions:

Bottom line: my recommendation is that we define the D,P,DP property in such a way
that it is a static characteristic of the Policy definition, which presumably allow it to
be used in "equivalence" determinations. I would also recommend that runtime
optimization be a configurable option, and it will be clear that if this option is activated,
that any presumption of equivalence should be disregarded as far as runtime behavior
would be concerned.

Comments, suggestions welcome.

    Thanks,
    Rich






On 5/6/2011 12:51 PM, Tyson, Paul H wrote:
3898C40CCD069D4F91FCD69C9EFBF096064B3D1C@txamashur004.ent.textron.com" type="cite">
I withdraw my objection to the Section 7 changes made by Erik in the 3.0
core spec wd-19.

I'm still concerned that the policy evaluation specification (in section
7) may cause unexpected variations in the results from two seemingly
"equivalent" policies, but I need to produce some theoretical or
empirical evidence to demonstrate this (or to relieve my concern).  In
any case, the wd-19 changes probably do not make this any better or
worse.

Regards,
--Paul

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