This project is a work in progress and should not be used in production
Access Control is essential for any modern application. Yet, poorly implemented, it can lead to privilege escalation attacks which can violate traditional rules.
TrusTrees are a new type of access control system that can be used to enforce access control rules in a way that is both secure and flexible.
Rather than traditional rules, which give a binary "yes or no," it allows permissions based on how a user navigates a system.
This offers multiple benefits:
- User navigation can be tracked and used to determine permissions
- Irregular behavior, such as querying data from an incorrect form or API (common in SQL injection), can be easily identified
- In the event of access token compromise, the scope of attack can be significantly minimized.
As a user navigates through an application, two things happen:
- A cryptographic chain of trust is established
- Scope is protected and reduced
The chain of trust leads to a smaller attack surface and greater auditability should an access token be compromised or abuse of permissions occur.
Each access token in the chain of trust has a scope. This scope is the set of permissions that the token is allowed to use.
When a user navigates to a new page, the scope is reduced to the intersection of the current scope and the new page's scope.
This means that, should a vulnerability be found in application code or an API, the scope of that vulnerability is limited. For example, a SQL injection attack on a page about salaries could not query user authentication information, even if the account has access to both tables.