Identity boxing: secure user-level containment for the grid

Abstract

Today, a public key infrastructure allows grid users to be identified with strong cryptographic credentials and and a descriptive, globally-unique name such as /O=UnivNowhere/CN=Fred. This powerful security infrastructure allows users to perform a single login and then access a variety of remote resources on the grid without further authentication steps. However, once connected to a specific system, a user's grid credentials must somehow be mapped to a local namespace. This creates a significant burden upon the administrator of each site to manage a continuously-changing user list. Large systems have worked around this by employing the old insecure standby of shared user accounts. A single user may be known by a different account name at every single site that he or she accesses, in addition to a variety of identity names given by certificate authorities. In order to access a resource, the user may need to have a local account generated. In order to share resources, each user must know the local identities of users that he/she wishes to share with. To solve these problems, we introduce the technique of identity boxing. An identity box is a well-defined execution space in which all processes and resources are associated with an external identity that need not have any relationship to the set of local accounts. That is, within an identity box, a program runs with an explicit grid identity string rather than with a simple integer UID. As a program executes, all access controls are performed using the high level name rather than the low-level account information. A single Unix account may be used to securely manage several identity boxes simultaneously, thus eliminating the need to services to run as root merely to change identities.