Identifying and Resolving Least Privilege Violations in Software Architectures

The implementation of security principles, like least privilege, in a software architecture is difficult, as no systematic rules on how to apply them in practice exist. As a result, they are often neglected, which lowers the overall security level of the software system and increases the cost to fix this later on. This paper improves the support for least privilege in software architectures by (i) defining the foundations to identify potential violations of the principle herein and (ii) elicitating architectural transformations that ameliorate the security properties of the architecture. These results have been implemented and validated in three case studies.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IEEEARES
• Authors: Koen Buyens, Bart De Win, Wouter Joosen
• Keywords: IEEEARES 2009, Overall Security Level, Security Principles, Security Privacy, Software Architectures