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rfc:rfc2704

Network Working Group M. Blaze Request for Comments: 2704 J. Feigenbaum Category: Informational J. Ioannidis

                                                  AT&T Labs - Research
                                                          A. Keromytis
                                                    U. of Pennsylvania
                                                        September 1999
           The KeyNote Trust-Management System Version 2

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
 not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
 memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 This memo describes version 2 of the KeyNote trust-management system.
 It specifies the syntax and semantics of KeyNote `assertions',
 describes `action attribute' processing, and outlines the application
 architecture into which a KeyNote implementation can be fit.  The
 KeyNote architecture and language are useful as building blocks for
 the trust management aspects of a variety of Internet protocols and
 services.

1. Introduction

 Trust management, introduced in the PolicyMaker system [BFL96], is a
 unified approach to specifying and interpreting security policies,
 credentials, and relationships; it allows direct authorization of
 security-critical actions.  A trust-management system provides
 standard, general-purpose mechanisms for specifying application
 security policies and credentials.  Trust-management credentials
 describe a specific delegation of trust and subsume the role of
 public key certificates; unlike traditional certificates, which bind
 keys to names, credentials can bind keys directly to the
 authorization to perform specific tasks.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 1] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 A trust-management system has five basic components:
  • A language for describing `actions', which are operations with

security consequences that are to be controlled by the system.

  • A mechanism for identifying `principals', which are entities that

can be authorized to perform actions.

  • A language for specifying application `policies', which govern the

actions that principals are authorized to perform.

  • A language for specifying `credentials', which allow principals to

delegate authorization to other principals.

  • A `compliance checker', which provides a service to applications

for determining how an action requested by principals should be

    handled, given a policy and a set of credentials.
 The trust-management approach has a number of advantages over other
 mechanisms for specifying and controlling authorization, especially
 when security policy is distributed over a network or is otherwise
 decentralized.
 Trust management unifies the notions of security policy, credentials,
 access control, and authorization.  An application that uses a
 trust-management system can simply ask the compliance checker whether
 a requested action should be allowed.  Furthermore, policies and
 credentials are written in standard languages that are shared by all
 trust-managed applications; the security configuration mechanism for
 one application carries exactly the same syntactic and semantic
 structure as that of another, even when the semantics of the
 applications themselves are quite different.
 Trust-management policies are easy to distribute across networks,
 helping to avoid the need for application-specific distributed policy
 configuration mechanisms, access control lists, and certificate
 parsers and interpreters.
 For a general discussion of the use of trust management in
 distributed system security, see [Bla99].
 KeyNote is a simple and flexible trust-management system designed to
 work well for a variety of large- and small-scale Internet-based
 applications.  It provides a single, unified language for both local
 policies and credentials.  KeyNote policies and credentials, called
 `assertions', contain predicates that describe the trusted actions
 permitted by the holders of specific public keys.  KeyNote assertions
 are essentially small, highly-structured programs.  A signed

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 2] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 assertion, which can be sent over an untrusted network, is also
 called a `credential assertion'.  Credential assertions, which also
 serve the role of certificates, have the same syntax as policy
 assertions but are also signed by the principal delegating the trust.
 In KeyNote:
  • Actions are specified as a collection of name-value pairs.
  • Principal names can be any convenient string and can directly

represent cryptographic public keys.

  • The same language is used for both policies and credentials.
  • The policy and credential language is concise, highly expressive,

human readable and writable, and compatible with a variety of

    storage and transmission media, including electronic mail.
  • The compliance checker returns an application-configured `policy

compliance value' that describes how a request should be handled

    by the application.  Policy compliance values are always
    positively derived from policy and credentials, facilitating
    analysis of KeyNote-based systems.
  • Compliance checking is efficient enough for high-performance and

real-time applications.

 This document describes the KeyNote policy and credential assertion
 language, the structure of KeyNote action descriptions, and the
 KeyNote model of computation.
 We assume that applications communicate with a locally trusted
 KeyNote compliance checker via a `function call' style interface,
 sending a collection of KeyNote policy and credential assertions plus
 an action description as input and accepting the resulting policy
 compliance value as output.  However, the requirements of different
 applications, hosts, and environments may give rise to a variety of
 different interfaces to KeyNote compliance checkers; this document
 does not aim to specify a complete compliance checker API.

2. KeyNote Concepts

 In KeyNote, the authority to perform trusted actions is associated
 with one or more `principals'.  A principal may be a physical entity,
 a process in an operating system, a public key, or any other
 convenient abstraction.  KeyNote principals are identified by a
 string called a `Principal Identifier'.  In some cases, a Principal
 Identifier will contain a cryptographic key interpreted by the

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 3] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 KeyNote system (e.g., for credential signature verification).  In
 other cases, Principal Identifiers may have a structure that is
 opaque to KeyNote.
 Principals perform two functions of concern to KeyNote: They request
 `actions' and they issue `assertions'.  Actions are any trusted
 operations that an application places under KeyNote control.
 Assertions delegate the authorization to perform actions to other
 principals.
 Actions are described to the KeyNote compliance checker in terms of a
 collection of name-value pairs called an `action attribute set'.  The
 action attribute set is created by the invoking application.  Its
 structure and format are described in detail in Section 3 of this
 document.
 KeyNote provides advice to applications about the interpretation of
 policy with regard to specific requested actions.  Applications
 invoke the KeyNote compliance checker by issuing a `query' containing
 a proposed action attribute set and identifying the principal(s)
 requesting it.  The KeyNote system determines and returns an
 appropriate `policy compliance value' from an ordered set of possible
 responses.
 The policy compliance value returned from a KeyNote query advises the
 application how to process the requested action.  In the simplest
 case, the compliance value is Boolean (e.g., "reject" or "approve").
 Assertions can also be written to select from a range of possible
 compliance values, when appropriate for the application (e.g., "no
 access", "restricted access", "full access").  Applications can
 configure the relative ordering (from `weakest' to `strongest') of
 compliance values at query time.
 Assertions are the basic programming unit for specifying policy and
 delegating authority.  Assertions describe the conditions under which
 a principal authorizes actions requested by other principals.  An
 assertion identifies the principal that made it, which other
 principals are being authorized, and the conditions under which the
 authorization applies.  The syntax of assertions is given in Section
 4.
 A special principal, whose identifier is "POLICY", provides the root
 of trust in KeyNote.  "POLICY" is therefore considered to be
 authorized to perform any action.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 4] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 Assertions issued by the "POLICY" principal are called `policy
 assertions' and are used to delegate authority to otherwise untrusted
 principals.  The KeyNote security policy of an application consists
 of a collection of policy assertions.
 When a principal is identified by a public key, it can digitally sign
 assertions and distribute them over untrusted networks for use by
 other KeyNote compliance checkers.  These signed assertions are also
 called `credentials', and serve a role similar to that of traditional
 public key certificates.  Policies and credentials share the same
 syntax and are evaluated according to the same semantics.  A
 principal can therefore convert its policy assertions into
 credentials simply by digitally signing them.
 KeyNote is designed to encourage the creation of human-readable
 policies and credentials that are amenable to transmission and
 storage over a variety of media.  Its assertion syntax is inspired by
 the format of RFC822-style message headers [Cro82].  A KeyNote
 assertion contains a sequence of sections, called `fields', each of
 which specifies one aspect of the assertion's semantics.  Fields
 start with an identifier at the beginning of a line and continue
 until the next field is encountered.  For example:
    KeyNote-Version: 2
    Comment: A simple, if contrived, email certificate for user mab
    Local-Constants:  ATT_CA_key = "RSA:acdfa1df1011bbac"
                      mab_key = "DSA:deadbeefcafe001a"
    Authorizer: ATT_CA_key
    Licensees: mab_key
    Conditions: ((app_domain == "email")  # valid for email only
              && (address == "mab@research.att.com"));
    Signature: "RSA-SHA1:f00f2244"
 The meanings of the various sections are described in Sections 4 and
 5 of this document.
 KeyNote semantics resolve the relationship between an application's
 policy and actions requested by other principals, as supported by
 credentials.  The KeyNote compliance checker processes the assertions
 against the action attribute set to determine the policy compliance
 value of a requested action.  These semantics are defined in Section
 5.
 An important principle in KeyNote's design is `assertion
 monotonicity'; the policy compliance value of an action is always
 positively derived from assertions made by trusted principals.
 Removing an assertion never results in increasing the compliance
 value returned by KeyNote for a given query.  The monotonicity

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 5] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 property can simplify the design and analysis of complex network-
 based security protocols; network failures that prevent the
 transmission of credentials can never result in spurious
 authorization of dangerous actions.  A detailed discussion of
 monotonicity and safety in trust management can be found in [BFL96]
 and [BFS98].

3. Action Attributes

 Trusted actions to be evaluated by KeyNote are described by a
 collection of name-value pairs called the `action attribute set'.
 Action attributes are the mechanism by which applications communicate
 requests to KeyNote and are the primary objects on which KeyNote
 assertions operate.  An action attribute set is passed to the KeyNote
 compliance checker with each query.
 Each action attribute consists of a name and a value.  The semantics
 of the names and values are not interpreted by KeyNote itself; they
 vary from application to application and must be agreed upon by the
 writers of applications and the writers of the policies and
 credentials that will be used by them.
 Action attribute names and values are represented by arbitrary-length
 strings.  KeyNote guarantees support of attribute names and values up
 to 2048 characters long.  The handling of longer attribute names or
 values is not specified and is KeyNote-implementation-dependent.
 Applications and assertions should therefore avoid depending on the
 the use of attributes with names or values longer than 2048
 characters.  The length of an attribute value is represented by an
 implementation-specific mechanism (e.g., NUL-terminated strings, an
 explicit length field, etc.).
 Attribute values are inherently untyped and are represented as
 character strings by default.  Attribute values may contain any non-
 NUL ASCII character.  Numeric attribute values should first be
 converted to an ASCII text representation by the invoking
 application, e.g., the value 1234.5 would be represented by the
 string "1234.5".
 Attribute names are of the form:
     <AttributeID>:: {Any string starting with a-z, A-Z, or the
                      underscore character, followed by any number of
                      a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or underscore characters} ;
 That is, an <AttributeID> begins with an alphabetic or underscore
 character and can be followed by any number of alphanumerics and
 underscores.  Attribute names are case-sensitive.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 6] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 The exact mechanism for passing the action attribute set to the
 compliance checker is determined by the KeyNote implementation.
 Depending on specific requirements, an implementation may provide a
 mechanism for including the entire attribute set as an explicit
 parameter of the query, or it may provide some form of callback
 mechanism invoked as each attribute is dereferenced, e.g., for access
 to kernel variables.
 If an action attribute is not defined its value is considered to be
 the empty string.
 Attribute names beginning with the "_" character are reserved for use
 by the KeyNote runtime environment and cannot be passed from
 applications as part of queries.  The following special attribute
 names are used:
     Name                        Purpose
     ------------------------    ------------------------------------
     _MIN_TRUST                  Lowest-order (minimum) compliance
                                 value in query; see Section 5.1.
     _MAX_TRUST                  Highest-order (maximum) compliance
                                 value in query; see Section 5.1.
     _VALUES                     Linearly ordered set of compliance
                                 values in query; see Section 5.1.
                                 Comma separated.
     _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS         Names of principals directly
                                 authorizing action in query.
                                 Comma separated.
 In addition, attributes with names of the form "_<N>", where <N> is
 an ASCII-encoded integer, are used by the regular expression matching
 mechanism described in Section 5.
 The assignment and semantics of any other attribute names beginning
 with "_" is unspecified and implementation-dependent.
 The names of other attributes in the action attribute set are not
 specified by KeyNote but must be agreed upon by the writers of any
 policies and credentials that are to inter-operate in a specific
 KeyNote query evaluation.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 7] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 By convention, the name of the application domain over which action
 attributes should be interpreted is given in the attribute named
 "app_domain".  The IANA (or some other suitable authority) will
 provide a registry of reserved app_domain names.  The registry will
 list the names and meanings of each application's attributes.
 The app_domain convention helps to ensure that credentials are
 interpreted as they were intended.  An attribute with any given name
 may be used in many different application domains but might have
 different meanings in each of them.  However, the use of a global
 registry is not always required for small-scale, closed applications;
 the only requirement is that the policies and credentials made
 available to the KeyNote compliance checker interpret attributes
 according to the same semantics assumed by the application that
 created them.
 For example, an email application might reserve the app_domain
 "RFC822-EMAIL" and might use the attributes named "address" (the
 email address of a message's sender), "name" (the human name of the
 message sender), and any "organization" headers present (the
 organization name).  The values of these attributes would be derived
 in the obvious way from the email message headers.  The public key of
 the message's signer would be given in the "_ACTION_AUTHORIZERS"
 attribute.
 Note that "RFC822-EMAIL" is a hypothetical example; such a name may
 or may not appear in the actual registry with these or different
 attributes.  (Indeed, we recognize that the reality of email security
 is considerably more complex than this example might suggest.)

4. KeyNote Assertion Syntax

 In the following sections, the notation [X]* means zero or more
 repetitions of character string X.  The notation [X]+ means one or
 more repetitions of X.  The notation <X>* means zero or more
 repetitions of non-terminal <X>.  The notation <X>+ means one or more
 repetitions of X, whereas <X>? means zero or one repetitions of X.
 Nonterminal grammar symbols are enclosed in angle brackets.  Quoted
 strings in grammar productions represent terminals.

4.1 Basic Structure

     <Assertion>:: <VersionField>? <AuthField> <LicenseesField>?
                   <LocalConstantsField>? <ConditionsField>?
                   <CommentField>? <SignatureField>? ;
 All KeyNote assertions are encoded in ASCII.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 8] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 KeyNote assertions are divided into sections, called `fields', that
 serve various semantic functions.  Each field starts with an
 identifying label at the beginning of a line, followed by the ":"
 character and the field's contents.  There can be at most one field
 per line.
 A field may be continued over more than one line by indenting
 subsequent lines with at least one ASCII SPACE or TAB character.
 Whitespace (a SPACE, TAB, or NEWLINE character) separates tokens but
 is otherwise ignored outside of quoted strings.  Comments with a
 leading octothorp character (see Section 4.2) may begin in any
 column.
 One mandatory field is required in all assertions:
    Authorizer
 Six optional fields may also appear:
    Comment
    Conditions
    KeyNote-Version
    Licensees
    Local-Constants
    Signature
 All field names are case-insensitive.  The "KeyNote-Version" field,
 if present, appears first.  The "Signature" field, if present,
 appears last.  Otherwise, fields may appear in any order.  Each field
 may appear at most once in any assertion.
 Blank lines are not permitted in assertions.  Multiple assertions
 stored in a file (e.g., in application policy configurations),
 therefore, can be separated from one another unambiguously by the use
 of blank lines between them.

4.2 Comments

    <Comment>:: "#" {ASCII characters} ;
 The octothorp character ("#", ASCII 35 decimal) can be used to
 introduce comments.  Outside of quoted strings (see Section 4.3), all
 characters from the "#" character through the end of the current line
 are ignored.  However, commented text is included in the computation
 of assertion signatures (see Section 4.6.7).

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 9] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

4.3 Strings

 A `string' is a lexical object containing a sequence of characters.
 Strings may contain any non-NUL characters, including newlines and
 nonprintable characters.  Strings may be given as literals, computed
 from complex expressions, or dereferenced from attribute names.

4.3.1 String Literals

    <StringLiteral>:: "\"" {see description below} "\"" ;
 A string literal directly represents the value of a string.  String
 literals must be quoted by preceding and following them with the
 double-quote character (ASCII 34 decimal).
 A printable character may be `escaped' inside a quoted string literal
 by preceding it with the backslash character (ASCII 92 decimal)
 (e.g., "like \"this\".").  This permits the inclusion of the double-
 quote and backslash characters inside string literals.
 A similar escape mechanism is also used to represent non-printable
 characters.  "\n" represents the newline character (ASCII character
 10 decimal), "\r" represents the carriage-return character (ASCII
 character 13 decimal), "\t" represents the tab character (ASCII
 character 9 decimal), and "\f" represents the form-feed character
 (ASCII character 12 decimal).  A backslash character followed by a
 newline suppresses all subsequent whitespace (including the newline)
 up to the next non-whitespace character (this allows the continuation
 of long string constants across lines).  Un-escaped newline and
 return characters are illegal inside string literals.
 The constructs "\0o", "\0oo", and "\ooo" (where o represents any
 octal digit) may be used to represent any non-NUL ASCII characters
 with their corresponding octal values (thus, "\012" is the same as
 "\n", "\101" is "A", and "\377" is the ASCII character 255 decimal).
 However, the NUL character cannot be encoded in this manner; "\0",
 "\00", and "\000" are converted to the strings "0", "00", and "000"
 respectively.  Similarly, all other escaped characters have the
 leading backslash removed (e.g., "\a" becomes "a", and "\\" becomes
 "\").  The following four strings are equivalent:
      "this string contains a newline\n followed by one space."
      "this string contains a newline\n \
      followed by one space."

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 10] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

      "this str\
         ing contains a \
           newline\n followed by one space."
      "this string contains a newline\012\040followed by one space."

4.3.2 String Expressions

 In general, anywhere a quoted string literal is allowed, a `string
 expression' can be used.  A string expression constructs a string
 from string constants, dereferenced attributes (described in Section
 4.4), and a string concatenation operator.  String expressions may be
 parenthesized.
     <StrEx>:: <StrEx> "." <StrEx>    /* String concatenation */
             | <StringLiteral>        /* Quoted string */
             | "(" <StrEx> ")"
             | <DerefAttribute>       /* See Section 4.4 */
             | "$" <StrEx> ;          /* See Section 4.4 */
 The "$" operator has higher precedence than the "." operator.

4.4 Dereferenced Attributes

 Action attributes provide the primary mechanism for applications to
 pass information to assertions.  Attribute names are strings from a
 limited character set (<AttributeID> as defined in Section 3), and
 attribute values are represented internally as strings.  An attribute
 is dereferenced simply by using its name.  In general, KeyNote allows
 the use of an attribute anywhere a string literal is permitted.
 Attributes are dereferenced as strings by default.  When required,
 dereferenced attributes can be converted to integers or floating
 point numbers with the type conversion operators "@" and "&".  Thus,
 an attribute named "foo" having the value "1.2" may be interpreted as
 the string "1.2" (foo), the integer value 1 (@foo), or the floating
 point value 1.2 (&foo).
 Attributes converted to integer and floating point numbers are
 represented according to the ANSI C `long' and `float' types,
 respectively.  In particular, integers range from -2147483648 to
 2147483647, whilst floats range from 1.17549435E-38F to
 3.40282347E+38F.
 Any uninitialized attribute has the empty-string value when
 dereferenced as a string and the value zero when dereferenced as an
 integer or float.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 11] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 Attribute names may be given literally or calculated from string
 expressions and may be recursively dereferenced.  In the simplest
 case, an attribute is dereferenced simply by using its name outside
 of quotes; e.g., the string value of the attribute named "foo" is by
 reference to `foo' (outside of quotes).  The "$<StrEx>" construct
 dereferences the attribute named in the string expression <StrEx>.
 For example, if the attribute named "foo" contains the string "bar",
 the attribute named "bar" contains the string "xyz", and the
 attribute "xyz" contains the string "qua", the following string
 comparisons are all true:
  foo == "bar"
  $("foo") == "bar"
  $foo == "xyz"
  $(foo) == "xyz"
  $$foo == "qua"
 If <StrEx> evaluates to an invalid or uninitialized attribute name,
 its value is considered to be the empty string (or zero if used as a
 numeric).
 The <DerefAttribute> token is defined as:
    <DerefAttribute>:: <AttributeID> ;

4.5 Principal Identifiers

 Principals are represented as ASCII strings called `Principal
 Identifiers'.  Principal Identifiers may be arbitrary labels whose
 structure is not interpreted by the KeyNote system or they may encode
 cryptographic keys that are used by KeyNote for credential signature
 verification.
     <PrincipalIdentifier>:: <OpaqueID>
                           | <KeyID> ;
 4.5.1  Opaque Principal Identifiers
 Principal Identifiers that are used by KeyNote only as labels are
 said to be `opaque'.  Opaque identifiers are encoded in assertions as
 strings (see Section 4.3):
     <OpaqueID>:: <StrEx> ;
 Opaque identifier strings should not contain the ":" character.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 12] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

4.5.2 Cryptographic Principal Identifiers

 Principal Identifiers that are used by KeyNote as keys, e.g., to
 verify credential signatures, are said to be `cryptographic'.
 Cryptographic identifiers are also lexically encoded as strings:
     <KeyID>:: <StrEx> ;
 Unlike Opaque Identifiers, however, Cryptographic Identifier strings
 have a special form.  To be interpreted by KeyNote (for signature
 verification), an identifier string should be of the form:
    <IDString>:: <ALGORITHM>":"<ENCODEDBITS> ;
 "ALGORITHM" is an ASCII substring that describes the algorithms to be
 used in interpreting the key's bits.  The ALGORITHM identifies the
 major cryptographic algorithm (e.g., RSA [RSA78], DSA [DSA94], etc.),
 structured format (e.g., PKCS1 [PKCS1]), and key bit encoding (e.g.,
 HEX or BASE64).  By convention, the ALGORITHM substring starts with
 an alphabetic character and can contain letters, digits, underscores,
 or dashes (i.e., it should match the regular expression "[a-zA-Z][a-
 zA-Z0-9_-]*").  The IANA (or some other appropriate authority) will
 provide a registry of reserved algorithm identifiers.
 "ENCODEDBITS" is a substring of characters representing the key's
 bits, the encoding and format of which depends on the ALGORITHM.  By
 convention, hexadecimal encoded keys use lower-case ASCII characters.
 Cryptographic Principal Identifiers are converted to a normalized
 canonical form for the purposes of any internal comparisons between
 them; see Section 5.2.
 Note that the keys used in examples throughout this document are
 fictitious and generally much shorter than would be required for
 security in practice.

4.6 KeyNote Fields

4.6.1 The KeyNote-Version Field

 The KeyNote-Version field identifies the version of the KeyNote
 assertion language under which the assertion was written.  The
 KeyNote-Version field is of the form
     <VersionField>:: "KeyNote-Version:" <VersionString> ;
     <VersionString>:: <StringLiteral>
                     | <IntegerLiteral> ;

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 13] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 where <VersionString> is an ASCII-encoded string.  Assertions in
 production versions of KeyNote use decimal digits in the version
 representing the version number of the KeyNote language under which
 they are to be interpreted.  Assertions written to conform with this
 document should be identified with the version string "2" (or the
 integer 2).  The KeyNote-Version field, if included, should appear
 first.

4.6.2 The Local-Constants Field

 This field adds or overrides action attributes in the current
 assertion only.  This mechanism allows the use of short names for
 (frequently lengthy) cryptographic principal identifiers, especially
 to make the Licensees field more readable.  The Local-Constants field
 is of the form:
     <LocalConstantsField>:: "Local-Constants:" <Assignments> ;
     <Assignments>:: /* can be empty */
                   | <AttributeID> "=" <StringLiteral> <Assignments> ;
 <AttributeID> is an attribute name from the action attribute
 namespace as defined in Section 3.  The name is available for use as
 an attribute in any subsequent field.  If the Local-Constants field
 defines more than one identifier, it can occupy more than one line
 and be indented.  <StringLiteral> is a string literal as described in
 Section 4.3.  Attributes defined in the Local-Constants field
 override any attributes with the same name passed in with the action
 attribute set.
 An attribute may be initialized at most once in the Local-Constants
 field.  If an attribute is initialized more than once in an
 assertion, the entire assertion is considered invalid and is not
 considered by the KeyNote compliance checker in evaluating queries.

4.6.3 The Authorizer Field

 The Authorizer identifies the Principal issuing the assertion.  This
 field is of the form
     <AuthField>:: "Authorizer:" <AuthID> ;
     <AuthID>:: <PrincipalIdentifier>
              | <DerefAttribute> ;
 The Principal Identifier may be given directly or by reference to the
 attribute namespace (as defined in Section 4.4).

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 14] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

4.6.4 The Licensees Field

 The Licensees field identifies the principals authorized by the
 assertion.  More than one principal can be authorized, and
 authorization can be distributed across several principals through
 the use of `and' and threshold constructs.  This field is of the form
     <LicenseesField>:: "Licensees:" <LicenseesExpr> ;
     <LicenseesExpr>::      /* can be empty */
                       | <PrincExpr> ;
     <PrincExpr>:: "(" <PrincExpr> ")"
                   | <PrincExpr> "&&" <PrincExpr>
                   | <PrincExpr> "||" <PrincExpr>
                   | <K>"-of(" <PrincList> ")"        /* Threshold */
                   | <PrincipalIdentifier>
                   | <DerefAttribute> ;
     <PrincList>:: <PrincipalIdentifier>
                 | <DerefAttribute>
                 | <PrincList> "," <PrincList> ;
     <K>:: {Decimal number starting with a digit from 1 to 9} ;
 The "&&" operator has higher precedence than the "||" operator.  <K>
 is an ASCII-encoded positive decimal integer.  If a <PrincList>
 contains fewer than <K> principals, the entire assertion is omitted
 from processing.

4.6.5 The Conditions Field

 This field gives the `conditions' under which the Authorizer trusts
 the Licensees to perform an action.  `Conditions' are predicates that
 operate on the action attribute set.  The Conditions field is of the
 form:
  <ConditionsField>:: "Conditions:" <ConditionsProgram> ;
  <ConditionsProgram>:: /* Can be empty */
                        | <Clause> ";" <ConditionsProgram> ;
  <Clause>:: <Test> "->" "{" <ConditionsProgram> "}"
           | <Test> "->" <Value>
           | <Test> ;
  <Value>:: <StrEx> ;

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 15] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

  <Test>:: <RelExpr> ;
  <RelExpr>:: "(" <RelExpr> ")"        /* Parentheses */
            | <RelExpr> "&&" <RelExpr> /* Logical AND */
            | <RelExpr> "||" <RelExpr> /* Logical OR */
            | "!" <RelExpr>         /* Logical NOT */
            | <IntRelExpr>
            | <FloatRelExpr>
            | <StringRelExpr>
            | "true"        /* case insensitive */
            | "false" ;     /* case insensitive */
  <IntRelExpr>:: <IntEx> "==" <IntEx>
               | <IntEx> "!=" <IntEx>
               | <IntEx> "<" <IntEx>
               | <IntEx> ">" <IntEx>
               | <IntEx> "<=" <IntEx>
               | <IntEx> ">=" <IntEx> ;
  <FloatRelExpr>:: <FloatEx> "<" <FloatEx>
                 | <FloatEx> ">" <FloatEx>
                 | <FloatEx> "<=" <FloatEx>
                 | <FloatEx> ">=" <FloatEx> ;
  <StringRelExpr>:: <StrEx> "==" <StrEx>  /* String equality */
                  | <StrEx> "!=" <StrEx>  /* String inequality */
                  | <StrEx> "<" <StrEx>   /* Alphanum. comparisons */
                  | <StrEx> ">" <StrEx>
                  | <StrEx> "<=" <StrEx>
                  | <StrEx> ">=" <StrEx>
                  | <StrEx> "~=" <RegExpr> ; /* Reg. expr. matching */
  <IntEx>:: <IntEx> "+" <IntEx>        /* Integer */
          | <IntEx> "-" <IntEx>
          | <IntEx> "*" <IntEx>
          | <IntEx> "/" <IntEx>
          | <IntEx> "%" <IntEx>
          | <IntEx> "^" <IntEx>        /* Exponentiation */
          | "-" <IntEx>
          | "(" <IntEx> ")"
          | <IntegerLiteral>
          | "@" <StrEx> ;
  <FloatEx>:: <FloatEx> "+" <FloatEx>  /* Floating point */
            | <FloatEx> "-" <FloatEx>
            | <FloatEx> "*" <FloatEx>
            | <FloatEx> "/" <FloatEx>
            | <FloatEx> "^" <FloatEx> /* Exponentiation */

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 16] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

            | "-" <FloatEx>
            | "(" <FloatEx> ")"
            | <FloatLiteral>
            | "&" <StrEx> ;
  <IntegerLiteral>:: {Decimal number of at least one digit} ;
  <FloatLiteral>:: <IntegerLiteral>"."<IntegerLiteral> ;
  <StringLiteral> is a quoted string as defined in Section 4.3
  <AttributeID> is defined in Section 3.
 The operation precedence classes are (from highest to lowest):
      { (, ) }
      {unary -, @, &, $}
      {^}
      {*, /, %}
      {+, -, .}
 Operators in the same precedence class are evaluated left-to-right.
 Note the inability to test for floating point equality,  as most
 floating point implementations (hardware or otherwise) do not
 guarantee accurate equality testing.
 Also note that integer and floating point expressions can only be
 used within clauses of condition fields, but in no other KeyNote
 field.
 The keywords "true" and "false" are not reserved; they can be used as
 attribute or principal identifier names (although this practice makes
 assertions difficult to understand and is discouraged).
 <RegExpr> is a standard regular expression, conforming to the POSIX
 1003.2 regular expression syntax and semantics.
 Any string expression (or attribute) containing the ASCII
 representation of a numeric value can be converted to an integer or
 float with the use of the "@" and "&" operators, respectively.  Any
 fractional component of an attribute value dereferenced as an integer
 is rounded down.  If an attribute dereferenced as a number cannot be
 properly converted (e.g., it contains invalid characters or is empty)
 its value is considered to be zero.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 17] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

4.6.6 The Comment Field

 The Comment field allows assertions to be annotated with information
 describing their purpose.  It is of the form
     <CommentField>:: "Comment:" <text> ;
 No interpretation of the contents of this field is performed by
 KeyNote.  Note that this is one of two mechanisms for including
 comments in KeyNote assertions; comments can also be inserted
 anywhere in an assertion's body by preceding them with the "#"
 character (except inside string literals).

4.6.7 The Signature Field

 The Signature field identifies a signed assertion and gives the
 encoded digital signature of the principal identified in the
 Authorizer field.  The Signature field is of the form:
     <SignatureField>:: "Signature:" <Signature> ;
     <Signature>:: <StrEx> ;
 The <Signature> string should be of the form:
     <IDString>:: <ALGORITHM>":"<ENCODEDBITS> ;
 The formats of the "ALGORITHM" and "ENCODEDBITS" substrings are as
 described for Cryptographic Principal Identifiers in Section 4.4.2
 The algorithm name should be the same as that of the principal
 appearing in the Authorizer field.  The IANA (or some other suitable
 authority) will provide a registry of reserved names.  It is not
 necessary that the encodings of the signature and the authorizer key
 be the same.
 If the signature field is included, the principal named in the
 Authorizer field must be a Cryptographic Principal Identifier, the
 algorithm must be known to the KeyNote implementation, and the
 signature must be correct for the assertion body and authorizer key.
 The signature is computed over the assertion text, beginning with the
 first field (including the field identifier string), up to (but not
 including) the Signature field identifier.  The newline preceding the
 signature field identifier is the last character included in
 signature calculation.  The signature is always the last field in a
 KeyNote assertion.  Text following this field is not considered part
 of the assertion.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 18] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 The algorithms for computing and verifying signatures must be
 configured into each KeyNote implementation and are defined and
 documented separately.
 Note that all signatures used in examples in this document are
 fictitious and generally much shorter than would be required for
 security in practice.

5. Query Evaluation Semantics

 The KeyNote compliance checker finds and returns the Policy
 Compliance Value of queries, as defined in Section 5.3, below.

5.1 Query Parameters

 A KeyNote query has four parameters:
  • The identifier of the principal(s) requesting the action.
  • The action attribute set describing the action.
  • The set of compliance values of interest to the application,

ordered from _MIN_TRUST to _MAX_TRUST

  • The policy and credential assertions that should be included in

the evaluation.

 The mechanism for passing these parameters to the KeyNote evaluator
 is application dependent.  In particular, an evaluator might provide
 for some parameters to be passed explicitly, while others are looked
 up externally (e.g., credentials might be looked up in a network-
 based distribution system), while still others might be requested
 from the application as needed by the evaluator, through a `callback'
 mechanism (e.g., for attribute values that represent values from
 among a very large namespace).

5.1.1 Action Requester

 At least one Principal must be identified in each query as the
 `requester' of the action.  Actions may be requested by several
 principals, each considered to have individually requested it.  This
 allows policies that require multiple authorizations, e.g., `two
 person control'.  The set of authorizing principals is made available
 in the special attribute "_ACTION_AUTHORIZERS"; if several principals
 are authorizers, their identifiers are separated with commas.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 19] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

5.1.2 Ordered Compliance Value Set

 The set of compliance values of interest to an application (and their
 relative ranking to one another) is determined by the invoking
 application and passed to the KeyNote evaluator as a parameter of the
 query.  In many applications, this will be Boolean, e.g., the ordered
 sets {FALSE, TRUE} or {REJECT, APPROVE}.  Other applications may
 require a range of possible values, e.g., {No_Access, Limited_Access,
 Full_Access}.  Note that applications should include in this set only
 compliance value names that are actually returned by the assertions.
 The lowest-order and highest-order compliance value strings given in
 the query are available in the special attributes named "_MIN_TRUST"
 and "_MAX_TRUST", respectively.  The complete set of query compliance
 values is made available in ascending order (from _MIN_TRUST to
 _MAX_TRUST) in the special attribute named "_VALUES".  Values are
 separated with commas; applications that use assertions that make use
 of the _VALUES attribute should therefore avoid the use of compliance
 value strings that themselves contain commas.

5.2 Principal Identifier Normalization

 Principal identifier comparisons among Cryptographic Principal
 Identifiers (that represent keys) in the Authorizer and Licensees
 fields or in an action's direct authorizers are performed after
 normalizing them by conversion to a canonical form.
 Every cryptographic algorithm used in KeyNote defines a method for
 converting keys to their canonical form and that specifies how the
 comparison for equality of two keys is performed.  If the algorithm
 named in the identifier is unknown to KeyNote, the identifier is
 treated as opaque.
 Opaque identifiers are compared as case-sensitive strings.
 Notice that use of opaque identifiers in the Authorizer field
 requires that the assertion's integrity be locally trusted (since it
 cannot be cryptographically verified by the compliance checker).

5.3 Policy Compliance Value Calculation

 The Policy Compliance Value of a query is the Principal Compliance
 Value of the principal named "POLICY".  This value is defined as
 follows:

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 20] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

5.3.1 Principal Compliance Value

 The Compliance Value of a principal <X> is the highest order
 (maximum) of:
  1. the Direct Authorization Value of principal <X>; and
  1. the Assertion Compliance Values of all assertions identifying

<X> in the Authorizer field.

5.3.2 Direct Authorization Value

 The Direct Authorization Value of a principal <X> is _MAX_TRUST if
 <X> is listed in the query as an authorizer of the action.
 Otherwise, the Direct Authorization Value of <X> is _MIN_TRUST.

5.3.3 Assertion Compliance Value

 The Assertion Compliance Value of an assertion is the lowest order
 (minimum) of the assertion's Conditions Compliance Value and its
 Licensee Compliance Value.

5.3.4 Conditions Compliance Value

 The Conditions Compliance Value of an assertion is the highest-order
 (maximum) value among all successful clauses listed in the conditions
 section.
 If no clause's test succeeds or the Conditions field is empty, an
 assertion's Conditions Compliance Value is considered to be the
 _MIN_TRUST value, as defined Section 5.1.
 If an assertion's Conditions field is missing entirely, its
 Conditions Compliance Value is considered to be the _MAX_TRUST value,
 as defined in Section 5.1.
 The set of successful test clause values is calculated as follows:
 Recall from the grammar of section 4.6.5 that each clause in the
 conditions section has two logical parts: a `test' and an optional
 `value', which, if present, is separated from the test with the "->"
 token.  The test subclause is a predicate that either succeeds
 (evaluates to logical `true') or fails (evaluates to logical
 `false').  The value subclause is a string expression that evaluates
 to one value from the ordered set of compliance values given with the
 query.  If the value subclause is missing, it is considered to be
 _MAX_TRUST.  That is, the clause

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 21] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

     foo=="bar";
 is equivalent to
     foo=="bar" -> _MAX_TRUST;
 If the value component of a clause is present, in the simplest case
 it contains a string expression representing a possible compliance
 value.  For example, consider an assertion with the following
 Conditions field:
     Conditions:
        @user_id == 0 -> "full_access";             # clause (1)
        @user_id < 1000 -> "user_access";           # clause (2)
        @user_id < 10000 -> "guest_access";         # clause (3)
        user_name == "root" -> "full_access";       # clause (4)
 Here, if the value of the "user_id" attribute is "1073" and the
 "user_name" attribute is "root", the possible compliance value set
 would contain the values "guest_access" (by clause (3)) and
 "full_access" (by clause (4)).  If the ordered set of compliance
 values given in the query (in ascending order) is {"no_access",
 "guest_access", "user_access", "full_access"}, the Conditions
 Compliance Value of the assertion would be "full_access" (because
 "full_access" has a higher-order value than "guest_access").  If the
 "user_id" attribute had the value "19283" and the "user_name"
 attribute had the value "nobody", no clause would succeed and the
 Conditions Compliance Value would be "no_access", which is the
 lowest-order possible value (_MIN_TRUST).
 If a clause lists an explicit value, its value string must be named
 in the query ordered compliance value set.  Values not named in the
 query compliance value set are considered equivalent to _MIN_TRUST.
 The value component of a clause can also contain recursively-nested
 clauses.  Recursively-nested clauses are evaluated only if their
 parent test is true.  That is,
     a=="b" ->  { b=="c" -> "value1";
                  d=="e"  -> "value2";
                  true -> "value3"; } ;
 is equivalent to
     (a=="b") && (b=="c") -> "value1";
     (a=="b") && (d=="e") -> "value2";
     (a=="b") -> "value3";

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 22] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 String comparisons are case-sensitive.
 A regular expression comparison ("~=") is considered true if the
 left-hand-side string expression matches the right-hand-side regular
 expression.  If the POSIX regular expression group matching scheme is
 used, the number of groups matched is placed in the temporary meta-
 attribute "_0" (dereferenced as _0), and each match is placed in
 sequence in the temporary attributes (_1, _2, ..., _N).  These
 match-attributes' values are valid only within subsequent references
 made within the same clause.  Regular expression evaluation is case-
 sensitive.
 A runtime error occurring in the evaluation of a test, such as
 division by zero or an invalid regular expression, causes the test to
 be considered false.  For example:
    foo == "bar" -> {
                      @a == 1/0 -> "oneval";    # subclause 1
                      @a == 2 -> "anotherval";  # subclause 2
                    };
 Here, subclause 1 triggers a runtime error.  Subclause 1 is therefore
 false (and has the value _MIN_TRUST).  Subclause 2, however, would be
 evaluated normally.
 An invalid <RegExpr> is considered a runtime error and causes the
 test in which it occurs to be considered false.

5.3.5 Licensee Compliance Value

 The Licensee Compliance Value of an assertion is calculated by
 evaluating the expression in the Licensees field, based on the
 Principal Compliance Value of the principals named there.
 If an assertion's Licensees field is empty, its Licensee Compliance
 Value is considered to be _MIN_TRUST.  If an assertion's Licensees
 field is missing altogether, its Licensee Compliance Value is
 considered to be _MAX_TRUST.
 For each principal named in the Licensees field, its Principal
 Compliance Value is substituted for its name.  If no Principal
 Compliance Value can be found for some named principal, its name is
 substituted with the _MIN_TRUST value.
 The licensees expression (as defined in Section 4.6.4) is evaluated
 as follows:

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 23] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

  • A "(…)" expression has the value of the enclosed subexpression.
  • A "&&" expression has the lower-order (minimum) of its two

subexpression values.

  • A "||" expression has the higher-order (maximum) of its two

subexpression values.

  • A "<K>-of(<List>)" expression has the K-th highest order

compliance value listed in <list>. Values that appear multiple

    times are counted with multiplicity.  For example, if K = 3 and
    the orders of the listed compliance values are (0, 1, 2, 2, 3),
    the value of the expression is the compliance value of order 2.
 For example, consider the following Licensees field:
      Licensees: ("alice" && "bob") || "eve"
 If the Principal Compliance Value is "yes" for principal "alice",
 "no" for principal "bob", and "no" for principal "eve", and "yes" is
 higher order than "no" in the query's Compliance Value Set, then the
 resulting Licensee Compliance Value is "no".
 Observe that if there are exactly two possible compliance values
 (e.g., "false" and "true"), the rules of Licensee Compliance Value
 resolution reduce exactly to standard Boolean logic.

5.4 Assertion Management

 Assertions may be either signed or unsigned.  Only signed assertions
 should be used as credentials or transmitted or stored on untrusted
 media.  Unsigned assertions should be used only to specify policy and
 for assertions whose integrity has already been verified as
 conforming to local policy by some mechanism external to the KeyNote
 system itself (e.g., X.509 certificates converted to KeyNote
 assertions by a trusted conversion program).
 Implementations that permit signed credentials to be verified by the
 KeyNote compliance checker generally provide two `channels' through
 which applications can make assertions available.  Unsigned,
 locally-trusted assertions are provided over a `trusted' interface,
 while signed credentials are provided over an `untrusted' interface.
 The KeyNote compliance checker verifies correct signatures for all
 assertions submitted over the untrusted interface.  The integrity of
 KeyNote evaluation requires that only assertions trusted as
 reflecting local policy are submitted to KeyNote via the trusted
 interface.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 24] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 Note that applications that use KeyNote exclusively as a local policy
 specification mechanism need use only trusted assertions.  Other
 applications might need only a small number of infrequently changed
 trusted assertions to `bootstrap' a policy whose details are
 specified in signed credentials issued by others and submitted over
 the untrusted interface.

5.5 Implementation Issues

 Informally, the semantics of KeyNote evaluation can be thought of as
 involving the construction a directed graph of KeyNote assertions
 rooted at a POLICY assertion that connects with at least one of the
 principals that requested the action.
 Delegation of some authorization from principal <A> to a set of
 principals <B> is expressed as an assertion with principal <A> given
 in the Authorizer field, principal set <B> given in the Licensees
 field, and the authorization to be delegated encoded in the
 Conditions field.  How the expression digraph is constructed is
 implementation-dependent and implementations may use different
 algorithms for optimizing the graph's construction.  Some
 implementations might use a `bottom up' traversal starting at the
 principals that requested the action, others might follow a `top
 down' approach starting at the POLICY assertions, and still others
 might employ other heuristics entirely.
 Implementations are encouraged to employ mechanisms for recording
 exceptions (such as division by zero or syntax error), and reporting
 them to the invoking application if requested.  Such mechanisms are
 outside the scope of this document.

6. Examples

 In this section, we give examples of KeyNote assertions that might be
 used in hypothetical applications.  These examples are intended
 primarily to illustrate features of KeyNote assertion syntax and
 semantics, and do not necessarily represent the best way to integrate
 KeyNote into applications.
 In the interest of readability, we use much shorter keys than would
 ordinarily be used in practice.  Note that the Signature fields in
 these examples do not represent the result of any real signature
 calculation.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 25] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 1. TRADITIONAL CA / EMAIL
    A. A policy unconditionally authorizing RSA key abc123 for all
       actions.  This essentially defers the ability to specify
       policy to the holder of the secret key corresponding to
       abc123:
         Authorizer: "POLICY"
         Licensees: "RSA:abc123"
    B. A credential assertion in which RSA Key abc123 trusts either
       RSA key 4401ff92 (called `Alice') or DSA key d1234f (called
       `Bob') to perform actions in which the "app_domain" is
       "RFC822-EMAIL", where the "address" matches the regular
       expression "^.*@keynote\.research\.att\.com$".  In other
       words, abc123 trusts Alice and Bob as certification
       authorities for the keynote.research.att.com domain.
         KeyNote-Version: 2
         Local-Constants: Alice="DSA:4401ff92"  # Alice's key
                          Bob="RSA:d1234f"      # Bob's key
         Authorizer: "RSA:abc123"
         Licensees: Alice || Bob
         Conditions: (app_domain == "RFC822-EMAIL") &&
                     (address ~=   # only applies to one domain
                       "^.*@keynote\\.research\\.att\\.com$");
         Signature: "RSA-SHA1:213354f9"
    C. A certificate credential for a specific user whose email
       address is mab@keynote.research.att.com and whose name, if
       present, must be "M. Blaze". The credential was issued by the
       `Alice' authority (whose key is certified in Example B
       above):
         KeyNote-Version: 2
         Authorizer: "DSA:4401ff92"  # the Alice CA
         Licensees: "DSA:12340987"   # mab's key
         Conditions: ((app_domain == "RFC822-EMAIL") &&
                      (name == "M. Blaze" || name == "") &&
                      (address == "mab@keynote.research.att.com"));
         Signature: "DSA-SHA1:ab23487"

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 26] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

    D. Another certificate credential for a specific user, also
       issued by the `Alice' authority.  This example allows three
       different keys to sign as jf@keynote.research.att.com (each
       for a different cryptographic algorithm).  This is, in
       effect, three credentials in one:
         KeyNote-Version: "2"
         Authorizer: "DSA:4401ff92"   # the Alice CA
         Licensees: "DSA:abc991" ||   # jf's DSA key
                    "RSA:cde773" ||   # jf's RSA key
                    "BFIK:fd091a"     # jf's BFIK key
         Conditions: ((app_domain == "RFC822-EMAIL") &&
                      (name == "J. Feigenbaum" || name == "") &&
                      (address == "jf@keynote.research.att.com"));
         Signature: "DSA-SHA1:8912aa"
       Observe that under policy A and credentials B, C and D, the
       following action attribute sets are accepted (they return
       _MAX_TRUST):
           _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "dsa:12340987"
           app_domain = "RFC822-EMAIL"
           address = "mab@keynote.research.att.com"
        and
           _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "dsa:12340987"
           app_domain = "RFC822-EMAIL"
           address = "mab@keynote.research.att.com"
           name = "M. Blaze"
       while the following are not accepted (they return
       _MIN_TRUST):
           _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "dsa:12340987"
           app_domain = "RFC822-EMAIL"
           address = "angelos@dsl.cis.upenn.edu"
        and
           _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "dsa:abc991"
           app_domain = "RFC822-EMAIL"
           address = "mab@keynote.research.att.com"
           name = "M. Blaze"
        and
           _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "dsa:12340987"
           app_domain = "RFC822-EMAIL"
           address = "mab@keynote.research.att.com"
           name = "J. Feigenbaum"

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 27] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 2. WORKFLOW/ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
    E. A policy that delegates authority for the "SPEND" application
       domain to RSA key dab212 when the amount given in the
       "dollars" attribute is less than 10000.
         Authorizer: "POLICY"
         Licensees: "RSA:dab212"  # the CFO's key
         Conditions: (app_domain=="SPEND") && (@dollars < 10000);
    F. RSA key dab212 delegates authorization to any two signers,
       from a list, one of which must be DSA key feed1234 in the
       "SPEND" application when @dollars < 7500.  If the amount in
       @dollars is 2500 or greater, the request is approved but
       logged.
         KeyNote-Version: 2
         Comment: This credential specifies a spending policy
         Authorizer: "RSA:dab212"        # the CFO
         Licensees: "DSA:feed1234" &&    # The vice president
                        ("RSA:abc123" || # middle manager #1
                         "DSA:bcd987" || # middle manager #2
                         "DSA:cde333" || # middle manager #3
                         "DSA:def975" || # middle manager #4
                         "DSA:978add")   # middle manager #5
         Conditions: (app_domain=="SPEND")  # note nested clauses
                       -> { (@(dollars) < 2500)
                              -> _MAX_TRUST;
                            (@(dollars) < 7500)
                              -> "ApproveAndLog";
                          };
         Signature: "RSA-SHA1:9867a1"
    G. According to this policy, any two signers from the list of
       managers will do if @(dollars) < 1000:
         KeyNote-Version: 2
         Authorizer: "POLICY"
         Licensees: 2-of("DSA:feed1234", # The VP
                         "RSA:abc123",   # Middle management clones
                         "DSA:bcd987",
                         "DSA:cde333",
                         "DSA:def975",
                         "DSA:978add")
         Conditions: (app_domain=="SPEND") &&
                     (@(dollars) < 1000);

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 28] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

    H. A credential from dab212 with a similar policy, but only one
       signer is required if @(dollars) < 500.  A log entry is made if
       the amount is at least 100.
         KeyNote-Version: 2
         Comment: This one credential is equivalent to six separate
                  credentials, one for each VP and middle manager.
                  Individually, they can spend up to $500, but if
                  it's $100 or more, we log it.
         Authorizer: "RSA:dab212"      # From the CFO
         Licensees: "DSA:feed1234" ||  # The VP
                    "RSA:abc123" ||    # The middle management clones
                    "DSA:bcd987" ||
                    "DSA:cde333" ||
                    "DSA:def975" ||
                    "DSA:978add"
         Conditions: (app_domain="SPEND")  # nested clauses
                       -> { (@(dollars) < 100) -> _MAX_TRUST;
                            (@(dollars) < 500) -> "ApproveAndLog";
                          };
         Signature: "RSA-SHA1:186123"
    Assume a query in which the ordered set of Compliance Values is
    {"Reject", "ApproveAndLog", "Approve"}.  Under policies E and G,
    and credentials F and H, the Policy Compliance Value is
    "Approve" (_MAX_TRUST) when:
         _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "DSA:978add"
         app_domain = "SPEND"
         dollars = "45"
         unmentioned_attribute = "whatever"
     and
         _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "RSA:abc123,DSA:cde333"
         app_domain = "SPEND"
         dollars = "550"
    The following return "ApproveAndLog":
         _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "DSA:feed1234,DSA:cde333"
         app_domain = "SPEND"
         dollars = "5500"
     and
         _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "DSA:cde333"
         app_domain = "SPEND"
         dollars = "150"

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 29] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

    However, the following return "Reject" (_MIN_TRUST):
         _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "DSA:def975"
         app_domain = "SPEND"
         dollars = "550"
     and
         _ACTION_AUTHORIZERS = "DSA:cde333,DSA:978add"
         app_domain = "SPEND"
         dollars = "5500"

7. Trust-Management Architecture

 KeyNote provides a simple mechanism for describing security policy
 and representing credentials.  It differs from traditional
 certification systems in that the security model is based on binding
 keys to predicates that describe what the key is authorized by policy
 to do, rather than on resolving names.  The infrastructure and
 architecture to support a KeyNote system is therefore rather
 different from that required for a name-based certification scheme.
 The KeyNote trust-management architecture is based on that of
 PolicyMaker [BFL96,BFS98].
 It is important to understand the separation between the
 responsibilities of the KeyNote system and those of the application
 and other support infrastructure.  A KeyNote compliance checker will
 determine, based on policy and credential assertions, whether a
 proposed action is permitted according to policy.  The usefulness of
 KeyNote output as a policy enforcement mechanism depends on a number
 of factors:
  • The action attributes and the assignment of their values must

reflect accurately the security requirements of the application.

    Identifying the attributes to include in the action attribute set
    is perhaps the most important task in integrating KeyNote into new
    applications.
  • The policy of the application must be correct and well-formed. In

particular, trust must be deferred only to principals that should,

    in fact, be trusted by the application.
  • The application itself must be trustworthy. KeyNote does not

directly enforce policy; it only provides advice to the

    applications that call it.  In other words, KeyNote assumes that
    the application itself is trusted and that the policy assertions
    it specifies are correct.  Nothing prevents an application from
    submitting misleading or incorrect assertions to KeyNote or from
    ignoring KeyNote altogether.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 30] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 It is also up to the application (or some service outside KeyNote) to
 select the appropriate credentials and policy assertions with which
 to run a particular query.  Note, however, that even if inappropriate
 credentials are provided to KeyNote, this cannot result in the
 approval of an illegal action (as long as the policy assertions are
 correct and the the action attribute set itself is correctly passed
 to KeyNote).
 KeyNote is monotonic; adding an assertion to a query can never result
 in a query's having a lower compliance value that it would have had
 without the assertion.  Omitting credentials may, of course, result
 in legal actions being disallowed.  Selecting appropriate credentials
 (e.g., from a distributed database or `key server') is outside the
 scope of the KeyNote language and may properly be handled by a remote
 client making a request, by the local application receiving the
 request, or by a network-based service, depending on the application.
 In addition, KeyNote does not itself provide credential revocation
 services, although credentials can be written to expire after some
 date by including a date test in the predicate.  Applications that
 require credential revocation can use KeyNote to help specify and
 implement revocation policies.  A future document will address
 expiration and revocation services in KeyNote.
 Because KeyNote is designed to support a variety of applications,
 several different application interfaces to a KeyNote implementation
 are possible.  In its simplest form, a KeyNote compliance checker
 would exist as a stand-alone application, with other applications
 calling it as needed.  KeyNote might also be implemented as a library
 to which applications are linked.  Finally, a KeyNote implementation
 might run as a local trusted service, with local applications
 communicating their queries via some interprocess communication
 mechanism.

8. Security Considerations

 Trust management is itself a security service.  Bugs in or incorrect
 use of a KeyNote compliance checker implementation could have
 security implications for any applications in which it is used.

9. IANA Considerations

 This document contains three identifiers to be maintained by the
 IANA.  This section explains the criteria to be used by the IANA to
 assign additional identifiers in each of these lists.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 31] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

9.1 app_domain Identifiers

 The only thing required of IANA on allocation of these identifiers is
 that they be unique strings.  These strings are case-sensitive for
 KeyNote purposes, however it is strongly recommended that IANA assign
 different capitalizations of the same string only to the same
 organization.

9.2 Public Key Format Identifiers

 These strings uniquely identify a public key algorithm as used in the
 KeyNote system for representing keys.  Requests for assignment of new
 identifiers must be accompanied by an RFC-style document that
 describes the details of this encoding.  Example strings are "rsa-
 hex:" and "dsa-base64:".  These strings are case-insensitive.

9.3 Signature Algorithm Identifiers

 These strings uniquely identify a public key algorithm as used in the
 KeyNote system for representing public key signatures.  Requests for
 assignment of new identifiers must be accompanied by an RFC-style
 document that describes the details of this encoding. Example strings
 are "sig-rsa-md5-hex:" and "sig-dsa-sha1-base64:".  Note that all
 such strings must begin with the prefix "sig-".  These strings are
 case-insensitive.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 32] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

A. Acknowledgments

 We thank Lorrie Faith Cranor (AT&T Labs - Research) and Jonathan M.
 Smith (University of Pennsylvania) for their suggestions and comments
 on earlier versions of this document.

B. Full BNF (alphabetical order)

 <ALGORITHM>:: {see section 4.4.2} ;
 <Assertion>:: <VersionField>? <AuthField> <LicenseesField>?
               <LocalConstantsField>? <ConditionsField>?
               <CommentField>? <SignatureField>? ;
 <Assignments>:: "" | <AttributeID> "=" <StringLiteral> <Assignments>
 ;
 <AttributeID>:: {Any string starting with a-z, A-Z, or the
                  underscore character, followed by any number of
                  a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or underscore characters} ;
 <AuthField>:: "Authorizer:" <AuthID> ;
 <AuthID>:: <PrincipalIdentifier> | <DerefAttribute> ;
 <Clause>:: <Test> "->" "{" <ConditionsProgram> "}"
          | <Test> "->" <Value> | <Test> ;
 <Comment>:: "#" {ASCII characters} ;
 <CommentField>:: "Comment:" {Free-form text} ;
 <ConditionsField>:: "Conditions:" <ConditionsProgram> ;
 <ConditionsProgram>:: "" | <Clause> ";" <ConditionsProgram> ;
 <DerefAttribute>:: <AttributeID> ;
 <ENCODEDBITS>:: {see section 4.4.2} ;
 <FloatEx>:: <FloatEx> "+" <FloatEx> | <FloatEx> "-" <FloatEx>
           | <FloatEx> "*" <FloatEx> | <FloatEx> "/" <FloatEx>
           | <FloatEx> "^" <FloatEx> | "-" <FloatEx>
           | "(" <FloatEx> ")" | <FloatLiteral> | "&" <StrEx> ;
 <FloatRelExpr>:: <FloatEx> "<" <FloatEx> | <FloatEx> ">" <FloatEx>
                | <FloatEx> "<=" <FloatEx>
                | <FloatEx> ">=" <FloatEx> ;

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 33] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 <FloatLiteral>:: <IntegerLiteral>"."<IntegerLiteral> ;
 <IDString>:: <ALGORITHM>":"<ENCODEDBITS> ;
 <IntegerLiteral>:: {Decimal number of at least one digit} ;
 <IntEx>:: <IntEx> "+" <IntEx> | <IntEx> "-" <IntEx>
         | <IntEx> "*" <IntEx> | <IntEx> "/" <IntEx>
         | <IntEx> "%" <IntEx> | <IntEx> "^" <IntEx>
         | "-" <IntEx> | "(" <IntEx> ")" | <IntegerLiteral>
         | "@" <StrEx> ;
 <IntRelExpr>:: <IntEx> "==" <IntEx> | <IntEx> "!=" <IntEx>
              | <IntEx> "<" <IntEx>  | <IntEx> ">" <IntEx>
              | <IntEx> "<=" <IntEx> | <IntEx> ">=" <IntEx> ;
 <K>:: {Decimal number starting with a digit from 1 to 9} ;
 <KeyID>:: <StrEx> ;
 <LicenseesExpr>:: "" | <PrincExpr> ;
 <LicenseesField>:: "Licensees:" <LicenseesExpr> ;
 <LocalConstantsField>:: "Local-Constants:" <Assignments> ;
 <OpaqueID>:: <StrEx> ;
 <PrincExpr>:: "(" <PrincExpr> ")" | <PrincExpr> "&&" <PrincExpr>
             | <PrincExpr> "||" <PrincExpr>
             | <K>"-of(" <PrincList> ")" | <PrincipalIdentifier>
             | <DerefAttribute> ;
 <PrincipalIdentifier>:: <OpaqueID> | <KeyID> ;
 <PrincList>:: <PrincipalIdentifier> | <DerefAttribute>
             | <PrincList> "," <PrincList> ;
 <RegExpr>:: {POSIX 1003.2 Regular Expression}
 <RelExpr>:: "(" <RelExpr> ")" | <RelExpr> "&&" <RelExpr>
           | <RelExpr> "||" <RelExpr> | "!" <RelExpr>
           | <IntRelExpr> | <FloatRelExpr> | <StringRelExpr>
           | "true" | "false" ;
 <Signature>:: <StrEx> ;
 <SignatureField>:: "Signature:" <Signature> ;

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 34] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 <StrEx>:: <StrEx> "." <StrEx> | <StringLiteral> | "(" <StrEx> ")"
         | <DerefAttribute> | "$" <StrEx> ;
 <StringLiteral>:: {see section 4.3.1} ;
 <StringRelExpr>:: <StrEx> "==" <StrEx> | <StrEx> "!=" <StrEx>
                 | <StrEx> "<" <StrEx> | <StrEx> ">" <StrEx>
                 | <StrEx> "<=" <StrEx> | <StrEx> ">=" <StrEx>
                 | <StrEx> "~=" <RegExpr> ;
 <Test>:: <RelExpr> ;
 <Value>:: <StrEx> ;
 <VersionField>:: "KeyNote-Version:" <VersionString> ;
 <VersionString>:: <StringLiteral> | <IntegerLiteral> ;

References

 [BFL96] M. Blaze, J. Feigenbaum, J. Lacy. Decentralized Trust
         Management. Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Symp. on Security
         and Privacy. pp 164-173.  IEEE Computer Society, 1996.
         Available at
         <ftp://ftp.research.att.com/dist/mab/policymaker.ps>
 [BFS98] M. Blaze, J. Feigenbaum, M. Strauss. Compliance-Checking in
         the PolicyMaker Trust-Management System. Proc. 2nd Financial
         Crypto Conference. Anguilla 1998.  LNCS #1465, pp 251-265,
         Springer-Verlag, 1998.  Available at
         <ftp://ftp.research.att.com/dist/mab/pmcomply.ps>
 [Bla99] M. Blaze, J. Feigenbaum, J. Ioannidis, A. Keromytis.  The
         Role of Trust Management in Distributed System Security.
         Chapter in Secure Internet Programming: Security Issues for
         Mobile and Distributed Objects (Vitek and Jensen, eds.).
         Springer-Verlag, 1999.  Available at
         <ftp://ftp.research.att.com/dist/mab/trustmgt.ps>.
 [Cro82] Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
         Messages", STD 11, RFC 822, August 1982.
 [DSA94] Digital Signature Standard. FIPS-186. National Institute of
         Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce. May 1994.
 [PKCS1] PKCS #1: RSA Encryption Standard, Version 1.5. RSA
         Laboratories. November 1993.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 35] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

 [RSA78] R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir, L. M. Adleman.  A Method for
         Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems.
         Communications of the ACM, v21n2. pp 120-126.  February 1978.

Authors' Addresses

 Comments about this document should be discussed on the keynote-users
 mailing list hosted at nsa.research.att.com.  To subscribe, send an
 email message containing the single line
               subscribe keynote-users
 in the message body to <majordomo@nsa.research.att.com>.
 Questions about this document can also be directed to the authors as
 a group at the keynote@research.att.com alias, or to the individual
 authors at:
 Matt Blaze
 AT&T Labs - Research
 180 Park Avenue
 Florham Park, New Jersey 07932-0971
 EMail: mab@research.att.com
 Joan Feigenbaum
 AT&T Labs - Research
 180 Park Avenue
 Florham Park, New Jersey 07932-0971
 EMail: jf@research.att.com
 John Ioannidis
 AT&T Labs - Research
 180 Park Avenue
 Florham Park, New Jersey 07932-0971
 EMail: ji@research.att.com
 Angelos D. Keromytis
 Distributed Systems Lab
 CIS Department, University of Pennsylvania
 200 S. 33rd Street
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  19104-6389
 EMail: angelos@dsl.cis.upenn.edu

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 36] RFC 2704 The KeyNote Trust-Management System September 1999

Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.
 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
 kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
 developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
 copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
 followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
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 The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
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 TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
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Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Blaze, et al. Informational [Page 37]

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