The poor usability of OpenLDAP Access Control Lists

The usability of Access Control Lists (ACLs) a widely used enterprise software for directory information services called OpenLDAP is addressed. A service to store variety data such as employee and passwords, can be seen critical infrastructure component an enterprise. Security in particular, access control paramount importance, provides ACLs this purpose that administrator configure. usability, is, the ease with which human express policy ACL, then important issue because misconfigurations are known major cause security vulnerabilities. Motivated by public pronouncements regarding poor ACLs, systematic study towards evaluating their carried out. authors begin cognitive walkthrough, identifies broad issues, informs design ethics-approved 50 participants. This reveals indeed, even limited syntax, adequate training focus only on devising from scratch, suffer usability. gathered analysed further, more detailed observations made those difference difficulty different kinds goals, nature errors participants make ACLs. As such, work makes contribution insights (re)design particular OpenLDAP.