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  A lattice interpretation of the Chinese Wall policy (1992) [21 citations — 2 self]

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by Ravi S. Sandhu
In Proceedings of the 15th NIST-NCSC National Computer Security Conference
http://www.list.gmu.edu/confrnc/ncsc/ps_ver/b92cwall.ps
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Abstract:

Abstract The Chinese Wall policy was identified and so named by Brewer and Nash [2]. This policy arises in the segment of the commercial sector which provides consulting services to other companies. Consultants naturally have to deal with confidential company information for their clients. The objective of the Chinese Wall policy is to prevent information flows which cause conflict of interest for individual consultants. Brewer and Nash develop a mathematical model of the Chinese Wall policy, on the basis of which they claim that this policy "cannot be correctly represented by a Bell-LaPadula model." In this paper we demonstrate that the Brewer-Nash model is too restrictive to be employed in a practical system. This is due to their treatment of users and subjects as synonymous concepts, with the consequence that they do not distinguish security policy as applied to human users versus security policy as applied to computer subjects. By maintaining a careful distinction between users, principals and subjects, we show that the Chinese Wall policy is just another lattice-based information policy which can be easily represented within the Bell-LaPadula framework. 1

Citations

394 Secure computer systems: Unified exposition and MULTICS interpretation – Bell, LaPadula - 1976
335 The protection of information in computer systems – Saltzer, Schroeder - 1975
329 A lattice model of secure information flow – Denning - 1976
218 The Chinese Wall security policy – Brewer, Nash - 1989
93 The Typed Access Matrix Model – Sandhu
21 Reasoning about security models – McLean - 1987