Trust Management and Whether to Delegate

Abstract. Trust Management systems use security credentials to determine whether action requests are authorized. This paper examines how they might be used in determining whether requests for delegation are safe. 1 Introduction Delegation certificates/credentials specify delegation of authorization between public keys. When an application receives a request to execute a particular action, then authentication notwithstanding, the application may use the credentials to determine whether the request is authorized. Trust management systems such as KeyNote [3] and SPKI [4] provide assistance to applications in making these decisions. For example, an application can request authorization judgments using the KeyNote API without having to be aware of the details of how to interpret credentials or the details of the underlying security policy. As an engineering paradigm, the desirability of such separation of concerns is well understood, as it can lead to applications that are easier to develop, understand and maintain