On-demand Restricted Delegation : A Framework for Dynamic, Context-Aware, Least-Privilege Delegation in Grids

In grids, delegation is a key facility that can be used to authenticate and authorize requests on behalf of disconnected users. In current grid systems,delegation is either performed dynamically, in an unrestricted manner, or by a secure but static method. Unfortunately, the former compromises security and the latter cannot satisfy the requirements of dynamic grid application execution. Therefore, development of a delegation framework that enables a restricted and flexible delegation mechanism becomes increasingly urgent as grids are adopted by new communities and grow in size. The main barriers in development of such a mechanism are the requirements for dynamic execution of grid applications, which make it difficult to anticipate required access rights for completing tasks in advance. Another significant architectural requirement in grids is federated security and trust. A considerable barrier to achieving this is cross-organizational authentication and identification. Organizations participating in Virtual Organizations (VOs) may use different security infrastructures that implement different protocols for authentication and identification; thus, there exists a need to provide an architectural mechanism for lightweight, rapid and interoperable translation of security credentials from an original format to a format understandable by recipients. This thesis contributes the development of a delegation framework that utilizes a mechanism for determining and acquiring only required rights and credentials for completing a task, when they are needed. This is what we call an on-demand delegation framework that realizes a bottom-up delegation model and provides a just-in-time acquisition of rights for restricted and dynamic delegation. In this thesis, we further contribute the development of a credential mapping mechanism using off-the-shelf standards and technologies. This mechanism provides support for an on-the-fly exchange of different types of security credentials used by the security mechanisms of existing grids.QC 2010062