Dynamic information flow control architecture for web applications

Abstract

In typical Web applications, the access control at the database management system is not effective due to the dependency on application behavior. That is, once the information is retrieved, a careless application can easily leak the information to undesirable parties. In addition, database accounts are often shared for multiple Web users in order to allow connection pooling. We propose DIFCA-J (Dynamic Information Flow Control Architecture for Java), to keep track of and control fine-grained information propagation through execution of the program. DIFCA-J allows controlling the information flow at run-time, without needing to modify the source code of the target application or the Java VMs. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.