ASLan++ - A formal security specification language for distributed systems

Abstract

This paper introduces ASLan++, the AVANTSSAR Specification Language. ASLan++ has been designed for formally specifying dynamically composed security-sensitive web services and service-oriented architectures, their associated security policies, as well as their security properties, at both communication and application level. We introduce the main concepts of ASLan++ at a small but very instructive running example, abstracted form a company intranet scenario, that features non-linear and inter-dependent workflows, communication security at different abstraction levels including an explicit credentials-based authentication mechanism, dynamic access control policies, and the related security goals. This demonstrates the flexibility and expressiveness of the language, and that the resulting models are logically adequate, while on the other hand they are clear to read and feasible to construct for system designers who are not experts in formal methods. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.