Policy Machine Core

The core components of the NIST Policy Machine, a reference implementation of the Next Generation Access Control (NGAC) standard. For complete documentation and detailed examples visit the Wiki.

Table of Contents

1. Installation
2. Basic Usage
3. Policy Author Language (PAL)

Install using Maven

Policy Machine Core uses JitPack to compile and build the artifact to import into projects. First, add jitpack as a repository

<project>
  --
  <repositories>
      <repository>
          <id>jitpack.io</id>
          <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
      </repository>
  </repositories>
  --
</project>

Then, add the maven dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.PM-Master</groupId>
    <artifactId>policy-machine-core</artifactId>
    <version>LATEST</version>
</dependency>

Basic Usage

Policy Machine Language docs can be found here

1. Policy Machine Language (PML) definition

String pal = """
set resource access rights ["read", "write"]

create policy class "pc1"
create user attribute "ua1" in ["pc1"]
create user attribute "oa1" in ["pc1"]
associate "ua1" and "oa1" with ["read", "write"]

create policy class "pc2"
assign "ua2" to ["pc2"]
create user attribute "oa2" in ["pc2"]
associate "ua2" and "oa2" with ["read", "write"]

create user "u1" in ["ua1", "ua2"]
create user "u2" in ["ua1", "ua2"]

create object "o1" in ["oa1", "oa2"]

create prohibition "u2-prohibition"
deny user "u2"
access rights ["write"]
on intersection of ["oa1", "oa2"]

create obligation "o1-obligation" {
    create rule "o1-assignment-rule"
    when any user
    performs ["assign"]
    on "o1"
    do(evtCtx) {
        let parent = evtCtx["parent"]
        associate "ua1" and parent with ["read", "write"]
        associate "ua2" and parent with ["read", "write"]
    }
}
"""

2. Load PAL into a Memory Policy Administration Point (PAP) as the super user

No access checks are done yet, the user is needed to know who the author of any obligations are.

UserContext superUser = new UserContext(SUPER_USER);
PAP pap = new MemoryPAP();
pap.deserialize().fromPML(superUser, input);

3. Wrap in a PDP object to add administrative permission checks

PDP pdp = new MemoryPDP(pap);

4. Run a PDP Transaction as the super user

This transaction will create 'pc3' and 'oa3', then assign 'o1' to 'oa3'. This will trigger the obligation to associate 'ua1' and 'ua2' with 'oa3'.

pdp.runTx(superUser, (policy) -> {
    policy.graph().createPolicyClass("pc3")
    policy.graph().createObjectAttribute("oa3", "pc2");
    policy.graph().assign("o1", "oa3");
});

5. Run a PDP transaction as u1 that will fail

u1 does not have permission to create an object attribute in 'oa1'. This transaction will fail and 'newOA' will not be created.

UserContext u1 = new UserContext("u1");
pdp.runTx(u1, (policy) -> {
    policy.graph().createObjectAttribute("newOA", "oa1");
});

6. Create an EPP to respond to policy events

An EPP will listen to policy events from the provided PDP and process obligations accordingly.

EPP epp = new EPP(pdp, pap);