Declassification: Dimensions and principles

Issue title: 18th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF 18)

Guest editors: J.D. Guttman

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sabelfeld, Andrei | Sands, David

Affiliations: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Göteborg, Göteborg, Sweden. URLs: www.cs.chalmers.se/~andrei, www.cs.chalmers.se/~dave

Abstract: Computing systems often deliberately release (or declassify) sensitive information. A principal security concern for systems permitting information release is whether this release is safe: is it possible that the attacker compromises the information release mechanism and extracts more secret information than intended? While the security community has recognised the importance of the problem, the state-of-the-art in information release is, unfortunately, a number of approaches with somewhat unconnected semantic goals. We provide a road map of the main directions of current research, by classifying the basic goals according to what information is released, who releases information, where in the system information is released and when information can be released. With a general declassification framework as a long-term goal, we identify some prudent principles of declassification. These principles shed light on existing definitions and may also serve as useful “sanity checks” for emerging models.

Keywords: Information flow, declassification

DOI: 10.3233/JCS-2009-0352

Journal: Journal of Computer Security, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 517-548, 2009