Formal Modeling of Trust-Based Access Control in Dynamic Coalitions

Modern networking technologies, such as Cloud or SOA, enable cooperations and individuals to form dynamic coalitions for temporary sharing of resources and information in order to achieve a common goal. In recent years the need for a formal understanding of the structures, the dynamic aspects and the processes of these coalitions has grown. In my ongoing thesis I propose a formal framework based on the abstract state machine (ASM) formalism in order to grasp and characterize dynamic coalitions in general and privacy-sensitive dynamic coalitions in particular. The ASM formalism allows for a structural description of dynamic coalitions as well as for a formalization of the inherent processes by means of ASM-runs, thereby enabling simulation, testing, and verification possibilities for the design of supporting architectures. This paper shows how the CoreASM-toolset is used to develop an abstract model of dynamic coalitions and extended to integrate trust-based access control mechanisms in order to enforce privacy aspects in highly dynamic coalitions. Finally an ongoing case study is introduced and first insights to the usability of the proposed model are given.