6th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2000)
Using Reflection as a Mechanism for Enforcing Security Policies in Mobile Code
Ian Welch, Robert J. Stroud
Keywords :
Abstract : Several authors have proposed using code modification as a technique for enforcing security policies such as resource limits, access controls, and network information flows. However, these approaches are typically ad hoc and are implemented witout a high level abstract framework for code modification. We propose using reflection as a mechanism for implementing code modifications within an abstract framework based on the semantics of the underlying programming language. We have developed a reflective version of Java called Kava that uses byte-code rewriting techniques to insert pre-defined hooks into Java class files at load time. This makes it possible to specify and implement security policies for mobile code in a more abstract and flexible way. Our mechanism could be used as a more principled way of enforcing some of the existing security policies described in the literature. The advantages of our approach over related work (SASI, JRes, etc.) are that we can guarantee that our security mechanisms cannot be bypassed, a property we call strong non-bypassability, and that our approach provides the high level abstractions needed to build useful security policies.
(Pages 309-323)