Access control for HTTP operations on linked data

Abstract

Access control is a recognized open issue when interacting with RDF using HTTP methods. In literature, authentication and authorization mechanisms either introduce undesired complexity such as SPARQL and ad-hoc policy languages, or rely on basic access control lists, thus resulting in limited policy expressiveness. In this paper we show how the Shi3ld attribute-based authorization framework for SPARQL endpoints has been progressively converted to protect HTTP operations on RDF. We proceed by steps: we start by supporting the SPARQL 1.1 Graph Store Protocol, and we shift towards a SPARQL-less solution for the Linked Data Platform. We demonstrate that the resulting authorization framework provides the same functionalities of its SPARQL-based counterpart, including the adoption of Semantic Web languages only. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.