INFORMATION SECURITY

Why Model?
What is an information security model? Why use one? A security policy is a statement that partitions the states of the system into a set of authorized, or secure, states and a set of unauthorized, or nonsecure, states A security mechanism is a procedure that enforces some part of the security policy. A security model is a model that represents a particular policy or set of policies.

Categories of InfoSec Models

Two major categories of information security models:
Access Control models: protect access to data Integrity Control models: verify that data is not changed

The access control model

Elements:
Objects Subjects Requests

An access control matrix

file1 rwx r r file2 rw r r file3 r file4 x x x

Objects Subject

user1 user2 user3

Bell-LaPadula Security Model

The Bell-LaPadula (BLP) model is about information confidentiality, and this model formally represents the long tradition of attitudes about the flow of information concerning national secrets.
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Bell LaPadula - Details

Earliest formal model Each user subject and information object has a fixed security class labels Use the notation to indicate dominance Simple Security (ss) property: the no read-up property
A subject s has read access to an object iff the class of the subject C(s) is greater than or equal to the class of the object C(o) i.e. Subjects can read Objects iff C(o) C(s)

Access Control: Bell-LaPadula

Top Secret

Read OK
Re ad O
ad Re

Top Secret

Secret

Secret

OK

Unclassified

Unclassified

Access Control: Bell-LaPadula

Top Secret
b or F n de id

Top Secret

Secret

d ea R Read OK
Re ad O

Secret

Unclassified

Unclassified

Access Control: Bell-LaPadula

Top Secret

Top Secret

Secret

Fo rb id de n

Secret

Re ad

Unclassified

rb Fo d ea R Read OK

n de id

Unclassified

Bell - LaPadula (2)

* property
(star): the no write-down property
While a subject has read access to object O, the subject can only write to object P if C(O) C (P)

Access Control: Bell-LaPadula

Top Secret
W

Write OK
rit e Fo rb id

Top Secret

de n

W e rit Fo

Secret

Secret
n

rb id de

Unclassified

Unclassified

Access Control: Bell-LaPadula

Top Secret
OK e rit

Top Secret

Secret
W

Write OK
rit e Fo rb id

Secret

de n

Unclassified

Unclassified

Access Control: Bell-LaPadula

Top Secret

Top Secret

Unclassified

Write OK

rit e

Secret

Secret

r it W

OK e

Unclassified