AspectJ for Multilevel Security

Author(s). Roshan Ramachandran, David J. Pearce and Ian Welch.

Venue. In Workshop on Aspects, Components, and Patterns for Infrastructure Software (ACP4IS), pages 13--17, 2006. ©ACM Press

Abstract: A multilevel security (MLS) system has two primary goals: first, it is intended to prevent unauthorised personnel from accessing information at higher classification than their authorisation. Second, it is intended to prevent personnel from declassifying information. Using an object-oriented approach to implementing MLS results not only with the problem of code scattering and code tangling, but also results in weaker enforcement of security. This weaker enforcement of security could be due to the inherent design of the system or due to a programming error. This paper presents a case study examining the benefits of using an aspect-oriented programming language (namely AspectJ) for MLS. We observe that aspect-oriented programming offers some benefits in enforcing MLS.