Security patterns Eduardo B. Fernandez

1. Security patterns Eduardo B. Fernandez Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering Florida Atlantic UniversityBoca Raton, FL, USA http://www.cse.fau.edu/~ed ed@cse.fau.edu

2. Outline • Introduction and motivation • Anatomy of a security pattern • Architectural layers and their patterns • A methodology for secure systems design • Conclusions

3. Patterns • A pattern is a solution to a recurrent problem in a specific context • Idea comes from architecture of buildings (C. Alexander) • Applied initially to software and then extended to other domains • Appeared in 1994 and are now being accepted by industry • Not related to intrusion detection, signature analysis, or similar

4. Value • Reusable solutions, maybe not directly, may require tailoring • Encapsulate experience and knowledge of designers (best practices) • Free of errors after a while • Need to be catalogued to be useful • Useful also for teaching • The appearance of design patterns was one of the most important developments in software engineering of the last 20 years.

5. Why security patterns? • Analysis patterns can be used to build conceptual models of software, design patterns can be used to make software more flexible and reusable, and security patterns can be used to build secure systems. Patterns can also solve hardware or organizational problems. • Security has had a long trajectory, starting from the early models of Lampson and Bell/LaPadula in the early 70s, and resulting in a variety of approaches to analyze security problems and to design security mechanisms. It is natural to try to codify this expertise in the form of patterns.

7. Anatomy of a security pattern • Every pattern starts with a thumbnail of the problem it solves and a brief description of how it solves the problem. • The Packet Filter Firewall filters incoming and outgoing network traffic in a computer system based on packet inspection at the IP level.

8. Context section • We define the context or environment where the pattern solution is applicable: Context • Computer systems on a local network connected to the Internet and to other networks with different levels of trust. A host in a local network receives and sends traffic to other networks. This traffic has several layers or levels. The most basic level is the IP level, made up of packets consisting of headers and bodies (payloads). The headers include the source and destination addresses as well as other routing information, the bodies include the message payloads.

9. Problem Section I • Now a generic description of what happens when we don’t have a good solution: We also indicate the forces that affect the possible solution. We may list all attacks that we want to stop with this solution. Problem • Some of the hosts in other networks may try to attack the local network through their IP-level payloads. These payloads may include viruses or application-specific attacks. We need to identify and block those hosts. :

10. Forces • We need to communicate with other networks so isolating our network is not an option. However, we do not want to take a high risk. • The protection mechanism should be able to reflect precisely the security policies of the institution. A too coarse defense may not be useful. • Any protection mechanism should be transparent to the users. Users should not need to perform special actions to be secure. • The cost and overhead of the protection mechanism should be relatively low or the system may become too expensive to run. • Network administrators deploy and configure a variety of protection mechanisms; hence it is important to have a clear model of what is being protected. • The attacks are constantly changing; hence it should be easy to make changes to the configuration of the protection mechanism. • It may be necessary to log input and/or output requests for auditing and defense purposes.

11. Solution section • The solution section describes the idea of the pattern. A descriptive figure may help to visualize the solution. Solution • A Packet Filter Firewall intercepts all traffic coming/going from a port P and inspects its packets (Figure 1). Those coming from or going to untrusted addresses are rejected. The untrusted addresses are determined from a set of rules that implement the security policies of the institution. A client from another network can only access the Local Host if a rule exists authorizing traffic from its address. Rules may be positive (allow traffic from some address) or negative (block traffic). Additionally, if a request is not satisfied by any of the Explicit Rules, then a Default Rule is applied.

12. Idea of the solution

13. Structure of the solution

14. Filtering a client’s request

15. Consequences--advantages • The Consequences section indicates the advantages and disadvantages of the solution embodied in this pattern. The advantages should match the forces in the Problem section. Consequences The Packet Filter Firewall Pattern has the following advantages: • A firewall transparently filters all the traffic that passes through it, thus lowering the risk of communicating with potentially hostile networks. • It is possible to express the institution filtering policies through its filtering rules, with different levels of protection for different parts of the network. • It is easy to update the rule set to counter new threats. • Because it intercepts all requests, a firewall allows systematic logging of incoming and outgoing messages. Because of this, a firewall facilitates the detection of possible attacks and helps to hold local users responsible of their actions when interacting with external networks. • Low cost, it is included as part of many operating systems and simple network devices such as routers. • Good performance. It only needs to look at the headers of IP packets, not at the complete packet. • It can be combined with Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for greater effectiveness. In this case, the IDS can tell the firewall to block suspicious traffic. This can also be useful to control Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

16. Known uses section • To accept this solution as a pattern we should find at least three examples of its use in real systems. Known Uses • This architecture can be found in commercial firewall products such as: ARGuE (Advanced Research Guard for Experimentation), OpenBSD Packet Filtering Firewall (the basic firewall architecture for the Berkeley Software Distribution system) and the Linux Firewall, the basic firewall architecture used with the Linux operating system.

17. Using the patterns • Catalogs of patterns are not enough, designers must be given guidance in their use • There are many patterns (growing in number) and the task of selecting them gets harder • A first approach is to classify the patterns according to some criteria

18. How to classify security patterns? • [Avg05] classifies architectural patterns using the type of concerns they address, e.g. Layered Structure, Data Flow, Adaptation, User Interaction, Distribution. Security patterns could be classified according to type of mecahnism, e.g. access control, authentication,… • We think of a computer system as a hierarchy of layers, where the application layer uses the services of the database and operating system layers, which in turn, execute on a hardware layer. • We combine these two classifications

19. Security principles for layers • Security constraints should be defined at the highest layer, where their semantics are clear, and propagated to the lower levels, which enforce them. • All the layers of the architecture must be secure. • We can define patterns at all levels. This allows a designer to make sure that all levels are secured, and also makes easier propagating down the high-level constraints.

20. Applic. Layer: Access control models • Authorization. How do we describe who is authorized to access specific resources in a system? A list of authorization rules describes who has access to what and how. • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). How do we assign rights to people based on their functions or tasks? Assign people to roles and give rights to these roles so they can perform their tasks. • Multilevel Security. How to decide access in an environment with security classifications.

21. More specialized access control • Metadata-Based Access Control, later renamed Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) [Pri04, Pri05]. Allow access to resources based on the attributes of the subjects and the properties of the objects • Aspect-oriented access control [Paz05]. Separate in different modules access policies that apply to a program.

22. Authorization

24. Reference monitor pattern

26. Role-Based Access Control • Users are assigned roles according to their functions and given the needed rights (access types for specific objects) • When users are assigned by administrators, this is a mandatory model • Can implement least privilege and separation of duty policies

28. Patterns for access control

29. Patterns for operating systems • Controlled Virtual Address Space. How to control access by processes to specific areas of their virtual address space (VAS) according to a set of predefined rights? Divide the VAS into segments that correspond to logical units in the programs. Use special words (descriptors) to represent access rights for these segments. • Controlled-Process Creator. How to define the rights to be given to a new process? Define rights as part of its creation. Give it a predefined subset of its parent’s rights. • File access control. How do you control access to files in an operating system? Apply the Authorization pattern to describe access to files by subjects. The protection object is now a file component that may be a directory or a file. • Controlled Execution Environment. How to define an execution environment for processes? Attach to each process a set of descriptors that represent the rights of the process. Use the Reference Monitor to enforce access.

30. Patterns for OSs

31. Latest set (PLoP’06) • Secure Process /Thread [Fer06c]. How do we make sure that a process does not interfere with other processes or misuse shared resources? • Virtual Address Space Structure Selection [Fer06c]. How do we select the virtual address space for OSs that have special security needs? Some systems emphasize isolation, others information sharing, others good performance. • Administrator Hierarchy [Fer06c]. Many attacks come from the unlimited power of administrators. How do we limit the power of administrators? Define a hierarchy of system administrators with rights controlled using a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model and assign rights according to their functions.

32. Patterns for firewalls • Packet Filter Firewall. Filter incoming and outgoing network traffic in a computer system based on network addresses. • Application Proxy Firewall . Inspect (and filter) incoming and outgoing network traffic based on the type of application they are accessing. • Stateful firewall Filter incoming and outgoing network traffic in a computer system based on network addresses and the state information derived from past communications.

33. Authentication patterns • Authenticator. How to verify that a subject is who it says it is? Use a single point of access to receive the interactions of a subject with the system and apply a protocol to verify the identity of the subject. • Remote Authenticator /Authorizer. Provide facilities for authentication and authorization when accessing shared resources in a loosely-coupled distributed system. • Credential. Provide portable menas of recording authentication and authorization information for use in distributed systems

34. Web services security • Application Firewall [Del04]. The application firewall filters calls and responses to/from enterprise applications, based on an institution access control policies. • XML Firewall [Del04]. Filter XML messages to/from enterprise applications, based on business access control policies and the content of the message. • XACML Authorization [Del05]. Enable an organization to represent authorization rules in a standard manner. • XACML Access Control Evaluation [Del05]. This pattern decides if a request is authorized to access a resource according to policies defined by the XACML Authorization pattern. . • WSPL [Del05]. Enable an organization to represent access control policies for its web services in a standard manner. It also enables a web services consumer to express its requirements in a standard manner.

35. Patterns for web services

38. How to apply the patterns? • A good catalog and classifications of patterns help a designer select among alternatives. • However, there is still the problem of when to apply a pattern during system development • We need some systematic approach to decide when we need to use a pattern, a secure systems methodology

39. Security along the life cycle

40. A methodology for secure systems design I • Domain analysis stage: A business model is defined. Legacy systems are identified and their security implications analyzed. Domain and regulatory constraints are identified. Policies must be defined up front, in this phase. • Requirements stage: Use cases define the required interactions with the system. Applying the principle that security must start from the highest levels, it makes sense to relate attacks to use cases. We study each action within a use case and see which threats are possible. We then determine which policies would stop these attacks. From the use cases we can also determine the needed rights for each actor and thus apply a need-to-know policy. 

41. Secure systems methodology II • Analysis stage: Analysis patterns can be used to build the conceptual model. Security patterns describe security models or mechanisms. We can build a conceptual model where repeated applications of a security model pattern realize the rights determined from use cases. • Design stage: When we have the possible attacks to a system, design mechanisms are selected to stop these attacks. User interfaces should correspond to use cases and may be used to enforce the authorizations defined in the analysis stage. Secure interfaces enforce authorizations when users interact with the system. Components can be secured by using authorization rules for components. Distribution provides another dimension where security restrictions can be applied.

42. Security methodology III • Implementation stage: This stage requires reflecting in the code the security rules defined in the design stage. Because these rules are expressed as classes, associations, and constraints, they can be implemented as classes in object-oriented languages. In this stage we can also select specific security packages or COTS, e.g., a firewall product, a cryptographic package. Some of the patterns identified earlier in the cycle can be replaced by COTS (these can be tested to see if they include a similar pattern).

43. Other uses of patterns • In addition to their value for designing new systems, patterns are also useful when selecting a system or an application. Possible candidates can be compared according to having or not a pattern embodying a given function or capability. For example, the presence of a Role-Based Control pattern in a system indicates its support for specific features of this model, e.g. sessions or groups. • Finally, we have used patterns for teaching and explaining security aspects. The abstraction present in patterns eliminates the effect of implementation details and is very valuable to make a complex structure more understandable.

44. Conclusions I • We considered the use of security patterns and looked in detail at one of them. • We classified security patterns using architectural levels and surveyed some patterns previously developed by us and others • We considered a methodology to apply security patterns to build secure systems • Patterns are also valuable for evaluating existing systems and for teaching security concepts

45. Conclusions II • Patterns cannot prevent attacks that happen through code flaws but can make their effect much less harmful • Can be made more formal: OCL • Security patterns are now accepted by many companies, Microsoft, Sun, and IBM have books, papers, and web pages on this subject. A general page for security patterns: www.security-patterns.org

46. Future work • Completing our methodology and the development of further patterns. • Use of the patterns in Model Driven Architecture (MDA), in general, and as part of our methodology • Exploring other types of security-related patterns: attack patterns