Controlling Access to Published Data Using Cryptography

We propose a framework for enforcing access control policies on published XML documents using cryptography. In this framework the owner publishes a single data instance, which is partially encrypted, and which enforces all access control policies. Our contributions include a declarative language for access policies, and the resolution of these policies into a logical “protection model” which protects an XML tree with keys. The data owner enforces an access control policy by granting keys to users. The model is quite powerful, allowing the data owner to describe complex access scenarios, and is also quite elegant, allowing logical optimizations to be described as rewriting rules. Finally, we describe cryptographic techniques for enforcing the protection model on published data, and provide a performance analysis using real datasets.