Many smartphone apps collect personal information used for a variety of purposes. Users, however, are often unaware of this kind of access even though they must grant the required permissions upon app installation. We have identified three reasons for this unawareness. First, relevant permissions c

As companies migrate from a centralized to a distributed computing environment, the administration and management of security policies, in particular authorization policies, is becoming an increasingly difficult task. The paper considers the design of an authorization system that is suitable for distributed applications. It discusses the architectural design principles, describes the constructs of the authorization policy language and outlines the authorization service and components involved. The paper gives some example policy specifications and illustrates how privileges are specified and evaluated, as well as how privilege resolutions are achieved.

A policy for propagation of authentication trust across realm boundaries is defined and rationalized. This policy helps limit global security exposures that ensue whenever an authentication service is compromised. The policy is based on a hierarchical model of inter-realm authentication and can be supported by both public key and secret key systems. As an example, a simple protocol which selects inter-realm authentication paths that satisfy the policy are presented. The protocol is part of a design which provides application transparency for inter-realm authentication path selection and acceptance as the default mode of operation. This design can be integrated with the security services of existing systems; e.g., of the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). DCE implementation issues are also discussed.>