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Fine-Grained Authorization in Microservice Architecture: A Decentralized Approach

Published: 21 May 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Authorization mechanisms are essential for securing microservice-based applications, with Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) being a prominent choice for fine-grained authorization. A decentralized authorization mechanism allows the transfer of responsibility for authorization enforcement from a central unit to multiple distributed and decentralized units. However, existing solutions often centralize authorization in microservice-based applications, which mitigate complexity but contradict the core principles of the microservice architecture, such as its overall distributed nature and loose coupling. To overcome this, we propose a microservice architecture that enables fine-grained authorization using ABAC on the microservice level. Our approach preserves the inherent loose coupling of microservices while ensuring high scalability. In particular, our architecture addresses the distribution of attributes among ABAC components, recognizing this as a critical consideration for robust authorization in microservice environments.

References

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Davide Berardi, Saverio Giallorenzo, Jacopo Mauro, Andrea Melis, Fabrizio Montesi, and Marco Prandini. 2022. Microservice security: a systematic literature review. PeerJ Computer Science 7 (Jan. 2022), e779.
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Brendan Burns and David Oppenheimer. 2016. Design Patterns for Container-based Distributed Systems. In 8th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud 16). USENIX Association, Denver, CO. https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotcloud16/workshop-program/presentation/burns
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Vincent C. Hu, David Ferraiolo, Rick Kuhn, Adam Schnitzer, Kenneth Sandlin, Robert Miller, and Karen Scarfone. 2014. Guide to Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) Definition and Considerations. Technical Report NIST SP 800-162. National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST SP 800--162 pages.
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Loic Miller, Pascal Merindol, Antoine Gallais, and Cristel Pelsser. 2021. Towards Secure and Leak-Free Workflows Using Microservice Isolation. In 2021 IEEE 22nd International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR). IEEE, Paris, France, 1--5.
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Sam Newman. 2015. Building microservices: designing fine-grained systems (first edition ed.). O'Reilly Media, Beijing Sebastopol, CA.
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Francisco Ponce, Jacopo Soldani, Hernán Astudillo, and Antonio Brogi. 2021. Smells and Refactorings for Microservices Security: A Multivocal Literature Review. http://arxiv.org/abs/2104.13303 arXiv:2104.13303 [cs].
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Martijn Sauwens, Emad Heydari Beni, Kristof Jannes, Bert Lagaisse, and Wouter Joosen. 2021. ThunQ: A Distributed and Deep Authorization Middleware for Early and Lazy Policy Enforcement in Microservice Applications. In Service-Oriented Computing, Hakim Hacid, Odej Kao, Massimo Mecella, Naouel Moha, and Hye-young Paik (Eds.), Vol. 13121. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 204--220.
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Mike Swoyer. 2020. Microservices Adoption in 2020. https://www.oreilly.com/radar/microservices-adoption-in-2020/
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Niklas Sänger and Sebastian Abeck. 2023. User Authorization in Microservice-Based Applications. Software 2, 3 (Sept. 2023), 400--426. Number: 3 Publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.
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cover image ACM Conferences
SAC '24: Proceedings of the 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing
April 2024
1898 pages
ISBN:9798400702433
DOI:10.1145/3605098
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).

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Published: 21 May 2024

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  1. microservice
  2. architecture
  3. fine-grained authorization
  4. ABAC

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