An access control system establishes a structure to manage the accessibility of resources within an organization or digital environment. It aims to prevent unauthorized individuals or entities from accessing data or taking actions outside their designated privileges. Such systems can govern physical entry points—like determining who can access a building—or digital ones—such as delineating permissions on a computer network or software platform. Key components of an access control system include:
- Authentication: It is the process of verifying the identity of a user, application, or system. This process ensures that the entity requesting access is who or what it claims to be. Common methods of authentication include username and password, multi-factor authentication, biometric verification, token-based authentication, and certificate-based authentication.
- Authorization: It determines the level of access, or permissions, granted to a legitimately authenticated user or system. Essentially, it answers the question: “What is this authenticated entity allowed to do or see within the system?”.
- Audit and Monitoring: It refer to the systematic tracking, recording, and analysis of activities or events within a system or network. These activities often include user actions, system accesses, and operations that affect data and resources. The primary goals are to ensure compliance with established policies, detect unauthorized or abnormal activities, and facilitate the identification of vulnerabilities or weaknesses. Elements often involved in audit and monitoring can include log files, real-time monitoring, alerts and notification, data analytics, and compliance reporting.
- Policy Management: It involves the creation, maintenance, and enforcement of rules, guidelines, and standard operating procedures that govern the behavior of users and systems within an organization or environment. These policies may include access policies, security policies, operational policies, compliance policies, change management policies, and policy auditing.
In this article, we will focus on authorization, which may use following popular mechanisms for enforcing access control:
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): In RBAC, permissions are associated with roles, and users are assigned to these roles. For example, a “Manager” role might have the ability to add or remove employees from a system, while an “Employee” role might only be able to view information. When a user is assigned a role, they inherit all the permissions that come with it.
- Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC): ABAC is a more flexible and complex system that uses attributes as building blocks in a rule-based approach to control access. These attributes can be associated with the user (e.g., age, department, job role), action (e.g., read, write), resource (e.g., file type, location), or even environmental factors (e.g., time of day, network security level). Policies are then crafted to allow or deny actions based on these attributes.
- Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC): PBAC is similar to ABAC but tends to be more dynamic, incorporating real-time information into its decision-making process. For example, a PBAC system might evaluate current network threat levels or the outcome of a risk assessment to determine whether access should be granted or denied. Policies can be complex, allowing for a high degree of flexibility and context-aware decisions.
- Access Control Lists (ACLs): A list specifying what actions a user or system can or cannot perform.
- Capabilities: In a capability-based security model, permissions are attached to tokens (capabilities) rather than to subjects (e.g., users) or objects (e.g., files). These tokens can be passed around between users and systems. Having a token allows a user to access a resource or perform an action. This model decentralizes the control of access, making it flexible but also potentially harder to manage at scale.
- Permissions: This is a simple and straightforward model where each object (like a file or database record) has associated permissions that specify which users can perform which types of operations (read, write, delete, etc.). This is often seen in file systems where each file and directory has an associated set of permission flags.
- Discretionary Access Control (DAC): In DAC models, the owner of the resource has the discretion to set its permissions. For example, in many operating systems, the creator of a file can decide who can read or write to that file.
- Mandatory Access Control (MAC): Unlike DAC, where users have some discretion over permissions, in MAC, the system enforces policies that users cannot alter. These policies often use labels or classifications (e.g., Top Secret, Confidential) to determine who can access what.
The approaches to authorization are not mutually exclusive and can be integrated to form hybrid systems. For instance, an enterprise might rely on RBAC for broad-based access management, while also employing ABAC or PBAC to handle more nuanced or sensitive use-cases. The remainder of this article will concentrate on the design and implementation of such hybrid authorization systems.
Industry Standards
Following are popular industry standards to provide a common framework for the design, implementation, and management of security policies across different systems:
- OAuth 2.0: IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standard to provide delegated access without sharing credentials.
- OpenID Connect (OIDC): OpenID Foundation standard that layers on on top of OAuth 2.0, primarily used for authentication but often used in conjunction with authorization.
- Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML): OASIS standard to exchange authentication and authorization information between parties.
- NIST Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): to manage permissions based on user roles.
- NIST Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC): to manage permissions based on attributes of users, systems, and the environment.
- JSON Web Token (JWT): IETF standard to encode claims between two parties, which is used with OAuth and OIDC standards.
- XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language): OASIS standard to define policy description and access control decisions.
- Common Access Card (CAC) and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Cards: Government agencies to provide secure physical and logical access.
- LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol): IETF standard for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services.
These standards often complement each other and can be used in combination to build robust, secure, and flexible authorization mechanisms.
Popular Authorization Systems
Various open-source and commercial authorization systems are available to cater to different needs, from simple role-based systems to complex policy-driven solutions. Here are some popular open-source authorization systems:
- Open Policy Agent (OPA): A general-purpose policy engine that enables fine-grained, context-aware access control across the stack.
- Casbin: A powerful, efficient, and lightweight access control library that supports various access control models.
- Authelia: A single sign-on (SSO) and two-factor authentication server.
- Keycloak: Offers integrated SSO and IDM for browser apps and RESTful web services, along with extensive authorization capabilities.
- Apache Shiro: A Java security framework that performs authentication, authorization, cryptography, and session management.
- Spring Security: Provides comprehensive security features for Java applications, including robust access control capabilities.
- FreeIPA: An integrated Identity and Authentication solution for Linux/UNIX networked environments.
- Pomerium: An identity-aware proxy that enables secure access to internal applications.
- ORY: A set of cloud-native identity infrastructure components, which include ORY Keto for access control.
- PlexRBAC: An open-source RBAC implementation that I wrote back in 2010 using Java language.
- PlexRBACJS: My open-source RBAC implementation using JavaScript language.
- SaasRBAC: My open-source RBAC implementation using Rust language.
Following are commercial offerings for authorization systems:
- AWS IAM and Cognito: Amazon Web Services offers these services for identity and access management, both within AWS and for apps using AWS backend services.
- Amazon Verified Permissions: Amazon Verified Permissions is a scalable, fine-grained permissions management and authorization service for custom applications.
- Okta: Provides a wide range of identity and access management solutions including strong authorization controls.
- Microsoft Azure AD: Offers identity services and access management through Azure’s cloud platform.
- Cyral: Focuses on data layer authorization, especially for data clouds and data warehouses.
- OneLogin: Provides unified access management, making it easier to secure connections across users and devices.
- Ping Identity: Provides solutions for both workforce and customer identity types.
- RSA SecurID Suite: Offers highly secure and flexible access control, including role-based and policy-driven controls.
- Saviom: Specializes in role-based access control for resource scheduling and project portfolio management.
- SailPoint: Offers intelligent identity management solutions, including fine-grained entitlement management and policy enforcement.
- ForgeRock: An identity management solution designed for consumer-facing applications, with extensive support for access management and federation.
- Idaptive (now part of CyberArk): Provides end-to-end identity automation and adaptive security.
Another noteworthy authorization solution is Google’s Zanzibar. While not available as an open-source or commercial product, Google has released a whitepaper outlining its architecture and principles. Zanzibar is engineered to meet the demands of large, intricate systems and is capable of processing millions of queries per second. The aforementioned authorization systems offer various configurations and customizations to meet an organization’s particular needs. We plan to draw from the design elements of these existing systems to create a robust and versatile authorization framework.
Design Tenets
Our authorization system will use a hybrid approach combining Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), and Relationship-Based Access Control (ReBAC) would incorporate various features inspired by the likes of OPA, AWS IAM, Google Zanzibar, and my previous implementations of similar authentication systems. Following are primary design tenets for building such authorization systems:
- Scalability: Capable of handling a large number of authorization requests per second and expand to accommodate growing numbers of users and resources.
- Flexibility: Supports RBAC, ABAC, and ReBAC, allowing for the handling of various scenarios.
- Fine-grained Control: Context aware such as time, location and real-time data, and can decide based on multiple attributes of the subject, object, and environment.
- Auditing and Monitoring: Detailed logs for all access attempts and policy changes, and real-time insights into access patterns, possibly with alerting for suspicious activities.
- Security: Applies least privilege, and enforces data masking and redaction.
- Usability: Easy-to-use interfaces for assigning, changing, and revoking roles.
- Extensibility: Comprehensive APIs for integration with other systems and services ability to run custom code during the authorization process.
- Reliability: have minimal downtime with backup and recovery.
- Compliance: adhere to regulatory requirements like GDPR, HIPAA, etc. and track changes to policies for auditing purposes.
- Multi-Tenancy: support multiple services and products with a variety of authorization models under a single unified system.
- Policy Versioning and Namespacing: allow multiple versions and namespaces of policies, making it possible to manage complex policy changes.
- Balance between Expressive and Performance: provide a good balance with expressive policies offered by OPA and high performance offered by Zanzibar.
- Policy Validation: check against invalid, unsafe or ambiguous policies and prevent users from making accidental mistakes.
- Performance Optimization: using cache, indexing, parallel processing, lazy evaluation, rule simplifications, automated reasoning, decision trees and other optimization techniques to improve performance of the system.
Authorization Concepts
Following is a list of high-level data model concepts that are typically used in the authorization systems:
Principal
The entity (which could be a user, system, or another service) that is making the request. Principals are often authenticated before they are authorized to perform an action.
Subject
Similar to a principal, the subject refers to the entity that is attempting to access a particular resource. In some contexts, a subject may represent a real person that has multiple principal identities for various systems.
Permission
An action that a principal is allowed to perform on a particular resource. For example, reading a file, updating a database record, or deleting an account.
Claim
A statement made by the principal, usually after authentication, that annotates the principal with specific attributes (e.g., username, roles, permissions). Claims are often used in token-based authentication systems like JWT to carry information about the principal.
Role
A named collection of permissions that can be assigned to a principal. Roles simplify the management of permissions by grouping them together under a single label.
Group
A collection of principals that are treated as a single unit for the purpose of granting permissions. For example, an “Admins” group might be given a role that allows them to perform administrative actions.
Access Policy
A set of rules that define the conditions under which a particular action is allowed or denied. Policies can be simple (“Admins can do anything”) or complex (“Users can edit a document only if they are the creator and the document is in ‘Draft’ status”).
Relation
Relations define how different entities are connected. For instance, a “user” can have a “memberOf” relation with a “group”, or a “document” can have an “ownedBy” relation with a “user”.
Resource
The object that the principal wants to access (e.g., a file, a database record).
Context
Additional situational information (e.g., IP address, time of day) that might influence the authorization decision.
Namespace
Each namespace could serve as a container for a set of resources, roles, and permissions.
Scope or Realm
This often refers to the level or context in which a permission is granted. For instance, in OAuth, scopes are used to specify what access a token grants the user, like “read-only” access to a particular resource.
Rule
A specific condition or criterion in a policy that dictates whether access should be granted or denied.
Dynamic Conditions
Dynamic conditions or predicates are expressions that must be evaluated at runtime to determine if access should be granted or denied. Dynamic conditions consists of attributes, operators and values, e.g.,
if (principal.role == "employee" AND principal.status == "active") OR (time < "17:00") then ALLOWif (principal.role == "admin") OR (document.owner == principal.id) then ALLOWif IP_address in [allowed_IPs] then ALLOWif time >= 09:00 AND time <= 17:00 then ALLOWAuthorization Data Model
Following data model is defined in Protocol Buffers definition language based on above authorization concepts:
Organization
The Organization abstracts a boundary of authorization data and it can have multiple namespaces for different security realms or segments of security domains. Here is the definition of Organization:
message Organization { // ID unique identifier assigned to this organization. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // Name of organization. string name = 3; // Allowed Namespaces for organization. repeated string namespaces = 4; // url for organization. string url = 5; // Optional parent ids. repeated string parent_ids = 6;}Principal
The Principal abstracts subject who is making an authorization request to perform an action on a target resource based on access rules and dynamic conditions. A Principal belongs to an organization and can be associated with groups, roles (RBAC), permissions and relationships (ReBAC). The Principal defines following properties:
message Principal { // ID unique identifier assigned to this principal. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // OrganizationId of the principal user. string organization_id = 3; // Allowed Namespaces for principal, should be subset of namespaces in organization. repeated string namespaces = 4; // Username of the principal user. string username = 5; // Email of the principal user. string email = 6; // Name of the principal user. string name = 7; // Attributes of principal map<string, string> attributes = 8; // Groups that the principal belongs to. repeated string group_ids = 9; // Roles that the principal belongs to. repeated string role_ids = 10; // Permissions that the principal belongs to. repeated string permission_ids = 11; // Relationships that the principal belongs to. repeated string relation_ids = 12;}Resource and ResourceInstance
The Resource represents target object for performing an action and checking an access rules policy. A resource can also be used to represent an object with a quota that can be allocated or assigned based on access policies. Here is a definition of Resource and ResourceInstance:
message Resource { // ID unique identifier assigned to this resource. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // Namespace for resource. string namespace = 3; // Name of the resource. string name = 4; // capacity of resource. int32 capacity = 5; // Attributes of resource. map<string, string> attributes = 6; // AllowedActions that can be performed. repeated string allowed_actions = 7;}enum ResourceState { ALLOCATED = 0; AVAILABLE = 1;}message ResourceInstance { // ID unique identifier assigned to this resource instance. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // ResourceID of the resource. string resource_id = 3; // Namespace for resource. string namespace = 4; // Principal that is using the resource. string principal_id = 5; // state of resource instance. ResourceState state = 6; // Time duration in milliseconds after which instance will expire. google.protobuf.Duration expiry = 7;}Permission
The Permission defines access policies for a resource including dynamic conditions based on GO Templates that are evaluated before granting an access:
enum Effect { PERMITTED = 0; DENIED = 1;}message Permission { // ID unique identifier assigned to this permission. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // Namespace for permission. string namespace = 3; // Scope for permission. string scope = 4; // Actions that can be performed. repeated string actions = 5; // Resource for the action. string resource_id = 6; // Effect Permitted or Denied Effect effect = 7; // Constraints expression with dynamic properties. string constraints = 8;}Role
A Principal can be associated with one or more Roles where each Role has a name and can be optionally associated with Permissions for implementing RBAC based access control, e.g.,
message Role { // ID unique identifier assigned to this role. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // Namespace for permission. string namespace = 3; // Name of the role. string name = 4; // PermissionIDs that can be performed. repeated string permission_ids = 5; // Optional parent ids repeated string parent_ids = 6;}A Role can also be inherited from multiple other Roles so that common Permissions can be defined in the parent Role(s) and specific Permissions are defined in the derived Roles.
Group
A Principal can be linked to multiple Groups, and each Group can be tied to several Roles. The Principal inherits access Permissions not only directly associated with it but also from the Roles it’s part of and the Groups it’s connected to. Here is the Group definition:
message Group { // ID unique identifier assigned to this group. string id = 1; // Version int64 version = 2; // Namespace for permission. string namespace = 3; // Name of the group. string name = 4; // RoleIDs that are associated. repeated string role_ids = 5; // Optional parent ids. repeated string parent_ids = 6;}A Group can also have one or parents similar to Roles so that access rules policies can check membership for groups or inherits all permissions that belong to a Group through its association with Roles.
Relationship
A Principal can define relationships with resources or target objects for performing actions and access policies can check for existence of a relationship before permitting an action and implementing ReBAC based policies. Though, Relationship seems similar to a Role or a Group but it differs from them because a Relationship directly associate between a Principal and a Resource where as a Role can be associated with multiple Principals and is indirectly associated with Resource through Permission object. Here is the definition for a Relationship:
message Relationship { // ID unique identifier assigned to this relationship. // in:body string id = 1; // Version // in:body int64 version = 2; // Namespace for permission. // in:body string namespace = 3; // Relation name. // in:body string relation = 4; // PrincipalID for relationship. // in:body string principal_id = 5; // ResourceID for relationship. // in:body string resource_id = 6; // Attributes of relationship. // in:body map<string, string> attributes = 7;}API Specifications for Authorization
The Authorization APIs are grouped into control-plane APIs for managing above data and their relationships with Principals and data-plane (behavioral) for Authorizing decisions. Following section defines control-plane APIs in Protocol Buffers definition language for managing authorization data and policies:
Control-Plane APIs for managing Organizations
service OrganizationsService { // Create Organizations swagger:route POST /api/v1/organizations organizations createOrganizationRequest // Responses: // 200: createOrganizationResponse rpc Create (CreateOrganizationRequest) returns (CreateOrganizationResponse); // Update Organizations swagger:route PUT /api/v1/organizations/{id} organizations updateOrganizationRequest // Responses: // 200: updateOrganizationResponse rpc Update (UpdateOrganizationRequest) returns (UpdateOrganizationResponse); // Get Organization swagger:route GET /api/v1/organizations/{id} organizations getOrganizationRequest // Responses: // 200: getOrganizationResponse rpc Get (GetOrganizationRequest) returns (GetOrganizationResponse); // Query Organization swagger:route GET /api/v1/organizations organizations queryOrganizationRequest // Responses: // 200: queryOrganizationResponse rpc Query (QueryOrganizationRequest) returns (stream QueryOrganizationResponse); // Delete Organization swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/organizations/{id} organizations deleteOrganizationRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteOrganizationResponse rpc Delete (DeleteOrganizationRequest) returns (DeleteOrganizationResponse);}Above definition also defines OpenAPI specification for REST based APIs so that the same behavior can be used by either gRPC or REST API protocols.
Control-Plane APIs for managing Principals
Following specification defines APIs to manage Principals and add/remove the associations with Roles, Groups, Permissions and Relationships:
service PrincipalsService { // Create Principals swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/principals principals createPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: createPrincipalResponse rpc Create (CreatePrincipalRequest) returns (CreatePrincipalResponse); // Update Principals swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/principals/{id} principals updatePrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: updatePrincipalResponse rpc Update (UpdatePrincipalRequest) returns (UpdatePrincipalResponse); // Get Principal swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id} principals getPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: getPrincipalResponse rpc Get (GetPrincipalRequest) returns (GetPrincipalResponse); // Query Principal swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/principals principals queryPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: queryPrincipalResponse rpc Query (QueryPrincipalRequest) returns (stream QueryPrincipalResponse); // Delete Principal swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/{organization_id}/principals/{id} principals deletePrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: deletePrincipalResponse rpc Delete (DeletePrincipalRequest) returns (DeletePrincipalResponse); // AddGroups Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/groups/add principals addGroupsToPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: addGroupsToPrincipalResponse rpc AddGroups (AddGroupsToPrincipalRequest) returns (AddGroupsToPrincipalResponse); // DeleteGroups Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/groups/delete principals deleteGroupsToPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteGroupsToPrincipalResponse rpc DeleteGroups (DeleteGroupsToPrincipalRequest) returns (DeleteGroupsToPrincipalResponse); // AddRoles Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/roles/add principals addRolesToPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: addRolesToPrincipalResponse rpc AddRoles (AddRolesToPrincipalRequest) returns (AddRolesToPrincipalResponse); // DeleteRole Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/roles/delete principals deleteRolesToPrincipalRequest // Responses: rpc DeleteRoles (DeleteRolesToPrincipalRequest) returns (DeleteRolesToPrincipalResponse); // AddPermissions Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/permissions/add principals addPermissionsToPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: addPermissionsToPrincipalResponse rpc AddPermissions (AddPermissionsToPrincipalRequest) returns (AddPermissionsToPrincipalResponse); // DeletePermissions Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/permissions/delete principals deletePermissionsToPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: deletePermissionsToPrincipalResponse rpc DeletePermissions (DeletePermissionsToPrincipalRequest) returns (DeletePermissionsToPrincipalResponse); // AddRelationships Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/relations/add principals addRelationshipsToPrincipalRequest // Responses: rpc AddRelationships (AddRelationshipsToPrincipalRequest) returns (AddRelationshipsToPrincipalResponse); // DeleteRelationships Principal swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/principals/{id}/relations/delete principals deleteRelationshipsToPrincipalRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteRelationshipsToPrincipalResponse rpc DeleteRelationships (DeleteRelationshipsToPrincipalRequest) returns (DeleteRelationshipsToPrincipalResponse);}Above definition defines OpenAPI specification for REST based APIs as well for providing groups management API using gRPC or REST API protocols.
Control-Plane APIs for managing Resources
service ResourcesService { // Create Resources swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources resources createResourceRequest // Responses: // 200: createResourceResponse rpc Create (CreateResourceRequest) returns (CreateResourceResponse); // Update Resources swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources/{id} resources updateResourceRequest // Responses: // 200: updateResourceResponse rpc Update (UpdateResourceRequest) returns (UpdateResourceResponse); // Query Resource swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources resources queryResourceRequest // Responses: // 200: queryResourceResponse rpc Query (QueryResourceRequest) returns (stream QueryResourceResponse); // Delete Resource swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources/{id} resources deleteResourceRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteResourceResponse rpc Delete (DeleteResourceRequest) returns (DeleteResourceResponse); // CountResourceInstances Resources swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources/{id}/instance_count resources countResourceInstancesRequest // Responses: // 200: countResourceInstancesResponse rpc CountResourceInstances (CountResourceInstancesRequest) returns (CountResourceInstancesResponse); // QueryResourceInstances Resources swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources/{id}/instances resources queryResourceInstanceRequest // Responses: // 200: queryResourceInstanceResponse rpc QueryResourceInstances (QueryResourceInstanceRequest) returns (stream QueryResourceInstanceResponse);}Control-Plane APIs for managing Groups
service GroupsService { // Create Groups swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/groups groups updateGroupRequest // Responses: // 200: updateGroupResponse rpc Create (CreateGroupRequest) returns (CreateGroupResponse); // Update Groups swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/groups groups/{id} updateGroupRequest // Responses: // 200: updateGroupResponse rpc Update (UpdateGroupRequest) returns (UpdateGroupResponse); // Query Group swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/groups groups queryGroupRequest // Responses: // 200: queryGroupResponse rpc Query (QueryGroupRequest) returns (stream QueryGroupResponse); // Delete Group swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/groups/{id} groups deleteGroupRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteGroupResponse rpc Delete (DeleteGroupRequest) returns (DeleteGroupResponse); // AddRoles Group swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/groups/{id}/roles/add groups addRolesToGroupRequest // Responses: // 200: addRolesToGroupResponse rpc AddRoles (AddRolesToGroupRequest) returns (AddRolesToGroupResponse); // DeleteRoles Group swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/groups/{id}/roles/delete groups deleteRolesToGroupRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteRolesToGroupResponse rpc DeleteRoles (DeleteRolesToGroupRequest) returns (DeleteRolesToGroupResponse);}Control-Plane APIs for managing Roles
service RolesService { // Create Roles swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/roles roles createRoleRequest // Responses: // 200: createRoleResponse rpc Create (CreateRoleRequest) returns (CreateRoleResponse); // Update Roles swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/roles/{id} roles updateRoleRequest // Responses: // 200: updateRoleResponse rpc Update (UpdateRoleRequest) returns (UpdateRoleResponse); // Query Role swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/roles roles queryRoleRequest // Responses: // 200: queryRoleResponse rpc Query (QueryRoleRequest) returns (stream QueryRoleResponse); // Delete Role swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/roles/{id} roles deleteRoleRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteRoleResponse rpc Delete (DeleteRoleRequest) returns (DeleteRoleResponse); // AddPermissions Role swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/roles/{id}/permissions/add roles addPermissionsToRoleRequest // Responses: // 200: addPermissionsToRoleResponse rpc AddPermissions (AddPermissionsToRoleRequest) returns (AddPermissionsToRoleResponse); // DeletePermissions Role swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/roles/{id}/permissions/delete roles deletePermissionsToRoleRequest // Responses: // 200: deletePermissionsToRoleResponse rpc DeletePermissions (DeletePermissionsToRoleRequest) returns (DeletePermissionsToRoleResponse);}Control-Plane APIs for managing Permissions
service PermissionsService { // Create Permissions swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/permissions permissions createPermissionRequest // Responses: // 200: createPermissionResponse rpc Create (CreatePermissionRequest) returns (CreatePermissionResponse); // Update Permissions swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/permissions/{id} permissions updatePermissionRequest // Responses: // 200: updatePermissionResponse rpc Update (UpdatePermissionRequest) returns (UpdatePermissionResponse); // Query Permission swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/permissions permissions queryPermissionRequest // Responses: // 200: queryPermissionResponse rpc Query (QueryPermissionRequest) returns (stream QueryPermissionResponse); // Delete Permission swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/permissions/{id} permissions deletePermissionRequest // Responses: // 200: deletePermissionResponse rpc Delete (DeletePermissionRequest) returns (DeletePermissionResponse);}Control-Plane APIs for managing Relationships
service RelationshipsService { // Create Relationships swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/relations relationships createRelationshipRequest // Responses: // 200: createRelationshipResponse rpc Create (CreateRelationshipRequest) returns (CreateRelationshipResponse); // Update Relationships swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/relations/{id} relationships updateRelationshipRequest // Responses: // 200: updateRelationshipResponse rpc Update (UpdateRelationshipRequest) returns (UpdateRelationshipResponse); // Query Relationship swagger:route GET /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/relations relationships queryRelationshipRequest // Responses: // 200: queryRelationshipResponse rpc Query (QueryRelationshipRequest) returns (stream QueryRelationshipResponse); // Delete Relationship swagger:route DELETE /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/relations/{id} relationships deleteRelationshipRequest // Responses: // 200: deleteRelationshipResponse rpc Delete (DeleteRelationshipRequest) returns (DeleteRelationshipResponse);}Data-Plane APIs for Authorization
Following specification defines APIs for authorizing access to resources based on permissions and constraints as well operations to allocate and deallocate resources:
service AuthZService { // Authorize swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/{principal_id}/auth authz authRequest // Responses: // 200: authResponse rpc Authorize (AuthRequest) returns (AuthResponse); // Check swagger:route POST /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/{principal_id}/auth/constraints authz checkConstraintsRequest // Responses: // 200: checkConstraintsResponse rpc Check (CheckConstraintsRequest) returns (CheckConstraintsResponse); // Allocate Resources swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources/{id}/allocate/{principal_id} resources allocateResourceRequest // Responses: // 200: allocateResourceResponse rpc Allocate (AllocateResourceRequest) returns (AllocateResourceResponse); // Deallocate Resources swagger:route PUT /api/v1/{organization_id}/{namespace}/resources/{id}/deallocate/{principal_id} resources deallocateResourceRequest // Responses: // 200: deallocateResourceResponse rpc Deallocate (DeallocateResourceRequest) returns (DeallocateResourceResponse);}Authorize API
The Authorize API takes AuthRequest as a request that defines Principal-Id, Resource-Name, Action and context attributes and checks permissions for granting access:
message AuthRequest { string organization_id = 1; string namespace = 2; string principal_id = 3; string action = 4; string resource = 5; string scope = 6; map<string, string> context = 7;}message AuthResponse { api.authz.types.Effect effect = 1; string message = 2;}Check Constraints API
The Check API allows evaluating dynamic conditions based on GO Templates without defining Permissions so that you can check for the membership to a group, a role, an existence of a relationship or other dynamic properties.
message CheckConstraintsRequest { string organization_id = 1; string namespace = 2; string principal_id = 3; string constraints = 4; map<string, string> context = 5;}message CheckConstraintsResponse { bool matched = 1; string output = 2;}Allocate and Deallocate Resources APIs
The Allocate and Deallocate APIs can be used to manage resources that can be assigned based on a quota or a maximum capacity, e.g.:
message AllocateResourceRequest { string organization_id = 1; string namespace = 2; string resource_id = 3; string principal_id = 4; string constraints = 5; google.protobuf.Duration expiry = 6; map<string, string> context = 7;}Implementation
Above hybrid authorization APIs is implemented in GO and is available freely from https://github.com/bhatti/PlexAuthZ. The following diagram illustrates structure of modules for the implementing various parts of the Authorization system:
Following are major components in above diagram:
API Layer
The API layer defines service interfaces and schema for domain model as well request/response objects. The interfaces are then implemented by gRPC servers and REST controllers.
Data Layer and Repositories
The Data layer defines interfaces for storing data in Redis or DynamoDB databases. The Repository layer defines interfaces for managing data for each type such as Principal, Organization and Resource.
Domain Services
The Domain services abstract over Repository layer and implements referential integrity between data objects and validation logic before persisting authorization data.
Authorizer
The Authorizer layer defines interfaces for Authorization decisions. The API layer implements the interface based on Casbin for communicating clients and servers. This layer defines a default implementation based on the Domain service layer for enforcing authorization decisions based on above APIs.
Factory and Configuration
The PlexAuthZ makes extensive use of interfaces with different implementations for Datastore, Repositories, Authorizer and AuthAdapter. The user can choose different implementations based on the Configuration, which are passed to the factory methods when instantiating objects that implement those interfaces.
AuthAdapter
The AuthAdapter abstracts Data services and Authorizer for interacting with underlying Authorization system. AuthAdapter defines a simplified DSL in GO language that understands the relationships between data objects. The users can instantiate AuthAdapter that can connect to remote gRPC server, REST controller, or the database directly.
Usage Examples
In above data model and APIs, Principals, Resources and Relationships can have arbitrary attributes that can be checked at runtime for enforcing policies based on attributes. In addition, the request objects for Authorize, Check and AllocateResource defines runtime context properties that can be passed along with other attributes when evaluating runtime conditions based on GO Templates. Following section defines use-cases for enforcing access policies based on ABAC, RBAC, ReBAC and PBAC:
GO Client Initialization
First, the GO client library will be setup with a selection of the implementation based on the database, gRPC client or REST API client, e.g.,
cfg, err := domain.NewConfig("") // omitting error handling here// config defines mode for access by database, gRPC or REST APIs.authService, _, err := factory.CreateAuthAdminService(cfg)authorizer, err := authz.CreateAuthorizer(authz.DefaultAuthorizerKind, cfg, authSvc)authAdapter := client.New(authorizer, authService)orgAdapter, err := authAdapter.CreateOrganization( &types.Organization{ Name: "xyz-corp", Namespaces: []string{"marketing", "sales"}, })namespace := orgAdapter.Organization.Namespaces[0]Attributes based Access Policies
Following example illustrates implementing attribute-based access policies where three Principals (alice, bob, charlie) will define attributes for Department and Rank:
alice, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("alice"). WithAttributes("Department", "Engineering", "Rank", "5").Create()bob, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("bob"). WithAttributes("Department", "Engineering", "Rank", "6").Create()charlie, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("charlie"). WithAttributes("Department", "Sales", "Rank", "6").Create()Then a resource for an ios-app and permissions will be defined as follows:
app, err := orgAdapter.Resources(namespace).WithName("ios-app"). WithAttributes("Editors", "alice bob"). WithActions("list", "read", "write", "create", "delete").Create()rlPerm1, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace).WithResource(app.Resource). WithConstraints(` {{or (Includes .Resource.Editors .Principal.Username) (GE .Principal.Rank 6)}}`).WithActions("read", "list").Create()wPerm2, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace).WithResource(app.Resource). WithConstraints(` {{and (Includes .Resource.Editors .Principal.Username) (GE .Principal.Rank 6)}}`).WithActions("write").Create()// assigning permission to all principalsalice.AddPermissions(rlPerm1.Permission, wPerm2.Permission)bob.AddPermissions(rlPerm1.Permission, wPerm2.Permission))charlie.AddPermissions(rlPerm1.Permission, wPerm2.Permission)The attributes based access permissions will be checked as follows:
// Alice, Bob, Charlie should be able to read/list since alice/bob belong to // Editors attribute and Charlie's rank >= 6require.NoError(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("list"). WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())require.NoError(t, bob.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("list"). WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())require.NoError(t, charlie.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("list"). WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())// Only Bob should be able to write because Alice's rank is lower than 6 and // Charlie doesn't belongto Editors attribute.require.Error(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("write"). WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())require.NoError(t, bob.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("write"). WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())require.Error(t, charlie.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("write"). WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())Note: The Authorization adapter defines Check method that will invoke the Authorize or Check method of the data-plane Authorization API based on parameters.
Runtime Attributes based on IPAddresses
The GO Templates allow defining custom functions and PlexAuthz implementation includes a number of helper functions to validate IP addresses, Geolocation, Time and other environment factors, e.g.,
rwlPerm, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace). WithResource(app.Resource). WithConstraints(`{{$Loopback := IsLoopback .IPAddress}}{{$Multicast := IsMulticast .IPAddress}}{{and (not $Loopback) (not $Multicast) (IPInRange .IPAddress "211.211.211.0/24")}}`).WithActions("read", "write", "list").Create()alice.AddPermissions(rwlPerm.Permission)// The app should be only be accessible if ip-address is not loop-back,// not multi-cast and within ip-rangerequire.NoError(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("list"). WithContext("IPAddress", "211.211.211.5").WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())// But not local ipaddress or multicastrequire.Error(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("list"). WithContext("IPAddress", "127.0.0.1").WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())require.Error(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("list"). WithContext("IPAddress", "224.0.0.1").WithResourceName("ios-app").Check())RBAC Scenario
The following example will assign roles and groups to Principal objects and then enforce membership before granting the access:
teller, err := orgAdapter.Roles(namespace).WithName("Teller").Create()manager, err := orgAdapter.Roles(namespace).WithName("Manager").WithParents(teller.Role).Create()loanOfficer, err := orgAdapter.Roles(namespace).WithName("LoanOfficer").Create()support, err := orgAdapter.Roles(namespace).WithName("ITSupport").Create()// Assigning rolesalice.AddRoles(manager.Role)bob.AddRoles(loanOfficer.Role)charlie.AddRoles(support.Role)sales, err := orgAdapter.Groups(namespace).WithName("Sales").Create()accounting, err := orgAdapter.Groups(namespace).WithName("Accounting").Create()engineering, err := orgAdapter.Groups(namespace).WithName("Engineering").Create()// Assigning groupsalice.AddGroups(sales.Group)bob.AddGroups(accounting.Group)charlie.AddGroups(engineering.Group)Following snippet illustrates enforcement of roles and groups membership:
require.NoError(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithConstraints(`{{and (HasRole "Teller") (HasGroup "Sales") (TimeInRange .CurrentTime .StartTime .EndTime)}}`).WithContext("CurrentTime", "10:00am", "StartTime", "8:00am", "EndTime", "4:00pm").Check())require.NoError(t, bob.Authorizer(namespace).WithConstraints(`{{and (HasRole "LoanOfficer") (HasGroup "Accounting") (TimeInRange .CurrentTime .StartTime .EndTime) (GT .Principal.EmploymentLength 1)}}`).WithContext("CurrentTime", "10:00am", "StartTime", "8:00am", "EndTime", "4:00pm").Check())require.NoError(t, charlie.Authorizer(namespace).WithConstraints(`{{and (HasRole "ITSupport") (HasGroup "Engineering") (TimeInRange .CurrentTime .StartTime .EndTime) (GT .Principal.EmploymentLength 1)}}`).WithContext("CurrentTime", "10:00am", "StartTime", "8:00am", "EndTime", "4:00pm").Check())// but should fail for bob because ITSupport Role and Engineering Group is required.require.Error(t, bob.Authorizer(namespace).WithConstraints(`{{and (HasRole "ITSupport") (HasGroup "Engineering") (TimeInRange .CurrentTime .StartTime .EndTime) (GT .Principal.EmploymentLength 1)}}`).WithContext("CurrentTime", "10:00am", "StartTime", "8:00am", "EndTime", "4:00pm").Check())Note: The Authorizer adapter will invoke Check API in above use-cases because it’s only using constraints without defining permissions.
ReBAC Scenario
Though, ReBAC systems generally define relationships between actors but you can consider a Principal as a subject-actor and a Resource as a target-actor for relationships. Following scenarios illustrates how relationships between Principal and Resources can be used to enforce ReBAC based access policies similar to Zanzibar:
smith, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("smith"). WithAttributes("UserRole", "Doctor").Create()john, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("john"). WithAttributes("UserRole", "Patient").Create()medicalRecords, err := orgAdapter.Resources(namespace).WithName("MedicalRecords"). WithAttributes("Year", fmt.Sprintf("%d", time.Now().Year()), "Location", "Hospital"). WithActions("read", "write", "create", "delete").Create()docRelation, err := smith.Relationships(namespace).WithRelation("AsDoctor"). WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource). WithAttributes("Location", "Hospital").Create()patientRelation, err := john.Relationships(namespace).WithRelation("AsPatient"). WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource).Create()rwPerm, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace).WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource). WithConstraints(`{{$CurrentYear := TimeNow "2006"}}{{and (HasRelation "AsDoctor") (DistanceWithinKM .UserLatLng "46.879967,-121.726906" 100) (eq .Resource.Year $CurrentYear) (eq .Resource.Location .Location)}}`).WithActions("read", "write").Create()rPerm, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace).WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource). WithScope("john's records"). WithConstraints(`{{$CurrentYear := TimeNow "2006"}}{{and (HasRelation "AsPatient") (eq .Resource.Year $CurrentYear) (eq .Resource.Location .Location)}}`).WithActions("read").Create()smith.AddPermissions(rwPerm.Permission)john.AddPermissions(rPerm.Permission)Above snippet defines medical-records as a resource, and Principals for smith and john where smith is assigned a relationship for AsDoctor and john is assigned a relationship for AsPatient. The permissions for reading or writing medical records enforce the AsDoctor relationship and permissions for reading medical records enforce the AsPatient relationship. Then enforcing relationships is defined as follows:
// Dr. Smith should have permission for reading/writing medical records based on constraintsrequire.NoError(t, smith.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("write"). WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource). WithContext("UserLatLng", "47.620422,-122.349358", "Location", "Hospital").Check())// Patient john should have permission for reading medical records based on constraintsrequire.NoError(t, john.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("read"). WithScope("john's records").WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource). WithContext("Location", "Hospital").Check())// But Patient john should not write medical recordsrequire.Error(t, john.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("write"). WithResource(medicalRecords.Resource). WithContext("Location", "Hospital").Check())Above Snippet also makes use of other functions available in the Template language for enforcing dynamic conditions based on Geofencing that permits access only when the doctor is close to the Hospital.
As the Relationships are defined between actors, we can also define a Resource to represent a Doctor and a Principal for the patient so that a patient-doctor relationship can be established, e.g.,
// Now treating Doctor as Target Resource for appointmentdoctorResource, err := orgAdapter.Resources(namespace).WithName(smith.Principal.Name). WithAttributes("Year", fmt.Sprintf("%d", time.Now().Year()), "Location", "Hospital").WithActions("appointment", "consult").Create()doctorPatientRelation, err := john.Relationships(namespace).WithRelation("Physician"). WithAttributes("StartTime", "8:00am", "EndTime", "4:00pm"). WithResource(doctorResource.Resource).Create()apptPerm, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace).WithResource(doctorResource.Resource). WithConstraints(`{{$CurrentYear := TimeNow "2006"}}{{and (TimeInRange .AppointmentTime .Relations.Physician.StartTime .Relations.Physician.EndTime) (HasRelation "Physician") (eq "Patient" .Principal.UserRole) (eq .Resource.Year $CurrentYear) (eq .Resource.Location .Location)}}`).WithActions("appointment").Create()john.AddPermissions(apptPerm.Permission)// Patient john should be able to make appointment within normal Hopspital hoursrequire.NoError(t, john.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("appointment"). WithResource(doctorResource.Resource). WithContext("Location", "Hospital", "AppointmentTime", "10:00am").Check())Above example shows how authorization rules can also limit access between the normal hours of appointments.
Resources with Quota
PlexAuthZ supports defining access policies for resources that have quota, e.g., an organization may have a fixed set of IDE Licenses to be used by the engineering team or might be using a utility based computing resources with a daily budget. Here is an example scenario:
engGroup, err := orgAdapter.Groups(namespace).WithName("Engineering").Create()alice, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("alice"). WithAttributes("Title", "Engineer", "Tenure", "3").Create()// Assigning groupsalice.AddGroups(engGroup.Group)// AND with following resourcesideLicences, err := orgAdapter.Resources(namespace).WithName("IDELicence"). WithCapacity(5).WithAttributes("Location", "Chicago"). WithActions("use").Create()require.NoError(t, ideLicences. WithConstraints(`and (GT .Principal.Tenure 1) (HasGroup "Engineering") (eq .Resource.Location .Location)`). WithExpiration(time.Hour).WithContext("Location", "Chicago").Allocate(bob.Principal))...// Deallocate after userequire.NoError(t, ideLicences.Deallocate(alice.Principal))Above example demonstrates that the IDE License can only be allocated if the Principal is member of Engineering group, has a tenure of more than a year and Location matches Resource Location. In addition, the resource can be allocated only for a fixed duration and is automatically deallocated if not allocated explicitly. Both Redis and Dynamo DB supports TTL parameters for expiring data so no application logic is required to expire them.
Resources with Wildcard in the name
PlexAuthZ supports resources with wildcards in the name so that a user can match permissions for all resources that match the wildcard pattern. Here is an example:
alice, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("alice"). WithAttributes("Department", "Sales", "Rank", "6").Create()bob, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("bob"). WithAttributes("Department", "Engineering", "Rank", "6").Create()// Creating a project with wildcardsalesProject, err := orgAdapter.Resources(namespace). WithName("urn:org-sales-*-project-1000-*"). WithAttributes("SalesYear", fmt.Sprintf("%d", time.Now().Year())). WithActions("read", "write").Create()rwlPerm, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace). WithResource(salesProject.Resource). WithEffect(types.Effect_PERMITTED). WithConstraints(` {{$CurrentYear := TimeNow "2006"}} {{and (GT .Principal.Rank 5) (eq .Principal.Department "Sales") (IPInRange .IPAddress "211.211.211.0/24") (eq .Resource.SalesYear $CurrentYear)}}`).WithActions("*").Create() require.NoError(t, err)alice.AddPermissions(rwlPerm.Permission))bob.AddPermissions(rwlPerm1.Permission)// Alice should be able to access from Sales Department and complete project namerequire.NoError(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("read"). WithResourceName("urn:org-sales-abc-project-1000-xyz"). WithContext("IPAddress", "211.211.211.5").Check())// But bob should not be able to access project because he doesn't belong to the Sales Departmentrequire.Error(t, bob.Authorizer(namespace).WithAction("read"). WithResourceName("urn:org-sales-abc-project-1000-xyz"). WithContext("IPAddress", "211.211.211.5").Check())Note: The project name “urn:org-sales-abc-project-1000-xyz” matches the wildcard in resource name and permissions also verify attributes of the Resource and Principal.
Permissions with Scope
PlexAuthZ allows associating permissions with specific Scope and the permission is only granted if the scope in authorization request at runtime matches the scope, e.g.,
alice, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("alice"). WithAttributes("Department", "Engineering", "Permanent", "true").Create()bob, err := orgAdapter.Principals().WithUsername("bob"). WithAttributes("Department", "Sales", "Permanent", "true").Create()project, err := orgAdapter.Resources(namespace).WithName("nextgen-app"). WithAttributes("Owner", "alice"). WithActions("list", "read", "write", "create", "delete").Create()rwlPerm, err := orgAdapter.Permissions(namespace).WithResource(project.Resource). WithScope("Reporting"). WithConstraints(` {{or (eq .Principal.Username .Resource.Owner) (Not .Private)}}`).WithActions("read", "write", "list").Create()alice.AddPermissions(rwlPerm.Permission)bob.AddPermissions(rwlPerm.Permission)// Project should be only be accessible by alice as the scope matches and she is the owner.require.NoError(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace). WithAction("list").WithScope("Reporting"). WithContext("Private", "true"). WithResourceName("nextgen-app").Check())// But alice should not be able to access without matching scope.require.Error(t, alice.Authorizer(namespace). WithAction("list").WithScope(""). WithContext("Private", "true"). WithResourceName("nextgen-app").Check())// But bob should not be able to access as project is private and he is not the owner. require.Error(t, bob.Authorizer(namespace). WithAction("list").WithScope("Reporting"). WithContext("Private", "true"). WithResourceName("nextgen-app").Check())Note: Above example also demonstrates show you can enforce ownership for private resources.
Summary
PlexAuthZ demonstrates how a hybrid Authorization system can support various forms of access policies based on on ABAC, RBAC, ReBAC and PBAC. It’s still early in development but it’s an open-source project that you can try freely from https://github.com/bhatti/PlexAuthZ.