Analysis of ANSI RBAC Support in EJB

We analyze access control mechanisms of the Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) architecture and define a configuration of the EJB protection system in a more precise and less ambiguous language than the EJB 3.0 standard. Using this configuration, we suggest an algorithm that formally specifies the semantics of authorization decisions in EJB. We analyze the level of support for the American National Standard Institute’s (ANSI) specification of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) components and functional specification in EJB. Our results indicate that the EJB specification falls short of supporting even Core ANSI RBAC. EJB extensions dependent on the operational environment are required in order to ANSI RBAC required components. Other vendor-specific extensions are necessary in order to support ANSI RBAC optional components. Fundamental limitations exist, however, due to impracticality of some aspects in the ANSI RBAC standard itself. This paper sets up a framework for assessing implementations of ANSI RBAC for EJB systems.