No registration needed: How to use declarative policies and negotiation to access sensitive resources on the Semantic Web

Abstract

Gaining access to sensitive resources on the Web usually involves an explicit registration step, where the client has to provide a predetermined set of information to the server. The registration process yields a login/password combination, a cookie, or something similar that can be used to access the sensitive resources. In this paper we show how an explicit registration step can be avoided on the Semantic Web by using appropriate semantic annotations, rule-oriented access control policies, and automated trust negotiation. After presenting the PeerTrust language for policies and trust negotiation, we describe our implementation of implicit registration and authentication that runs under the Java-based MINERVA Prolog engine. The implementation includes a PeerTrust policy applet and evaluator, facilities to import local metadata, policies and credentials, and secure communication channels between all parties. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.