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ABAC
Table of Contents
The ABAC project has designed and implemented tools for using Attribute-Based Access Control, a scalable authorization system based on formal logic. It maps principals to attributes and uses the attribute to make an authorization decision, e.g., if user1 has the login attribute the login program will alllow them to log in. This library, libabac, is a base on which to build those tools. It is in use in the DETER federation system and being integrated with the GENI network testbed.
If you are new to ABAC, you may find the introductory material from our TIED project helpful. That material summarizes the power and semantics of ABAC and links to examples of ABAC policy illustrated using an early example of the Crudge ABAC policy browser.
The latest ABAC RT0 version is ABAC 0.1.4. Jump down to Source to download it.
What's Included
The core libabac distribution includes:
- libabac, a linkable C/C++ library
- Perl and Python bindings to libabac
- A standalone java implementation
- creddy, a command line credential management tool
These ABAC tools use libabac
- crudge a visual editor for ABAC policies and proofs
- credential printer an XMLRPC service to convert credentials to a text representation
Getting started: Installing libabac
Installing libabac is a straightforward configure
, make
, make install
sequence. There are a few things to be careful of depending on your operating system.
Software Dependencies
Libabac depends on openssl and the xmlsec1 digital signature library. Most unix-like operating systems have openssl installed and have xmlsec1 as a standard package. The perl and python bingings are generated by swig 1.3, and the build system uses automake and some autoconf macros.
To set up Ubuntu for building libabac:
$ sudo apt-get -y install autoconf-archive automake g++ git-core libtool python-dev swig libxmlsec1-dev
Under FreeBSD, use the ports system to install the following packages:
devel/libtool devel/automake devel/autoconf-archive devel/swig13 devel/pkg-config security/xmlsec1 lang/perl lang/python
If you plan to build the java implementation on ubuntu you should also
$ apt-get -y install openjdk-7-jdk ant ant-optional
Similarly in FreeBSD install
devel/apache-ant java/openjdk6
We have seen no differences under the various JDKs.
Installation
Then get the source, untar it, change to the abac-0.1.4
directory and do the standars install sequence:
# Ubuntu users: ./configure --prefix=/usr $ ./configure $ make $ sudo make install
To confirm that your install succeeded:
$ cd examples $ make
Libabac uses the standard GNU install prefix of /usr/local
. If you are on Ububtu or another distribution that does not search /usr/local/lib for shared libraries, make sure you use ./configure --prefix=/usr
Tracking Development
If you would like to track the libabac development, you can pull code from out publically available git repository:
$ git clone git://abac.deterlab.net/abac.git
Current sources can be browsed on the web.
Releases
See the ChangeLog for details about each release
- 2013-05-XX: ABAC 0.1.4 released
- 2011-04-11: Crudge 1.0 released
- 2011-03-30: ABAC 0.1.3 released
- 2010-10-01: ABAC 0.1.2 released
2010-09-172010-09-20: ABAC 0.1.1 released- Update: We fixed a one-line bug in creddy. If you downloaded this over the weekend, please fetch it again.
Contacts
- devevelopers mailing list
- Ted Faber faber@…
- Mei-Hui Su mei@…
- Steve Schwab schwab@…