SEKE 2012 Proceedings - Knowledge Systems Institute

Connectors for Secure Software Architectures
Michael E. Shin,
Bhavya Malhotra
Department of Computer Science
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3104
{michael.shin;
bhavy.malhotra}@ttu.edu
Hassan Gomaa
Department of Computer
Science
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
hgomaa@gmu.edu
Taeghyun Kang
Department of Computer
Science
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3104
th.kang@ttu.edu
Abstract
This paper describes secure software connectors
encapsulating security services, which are designed
separately from application business components in
software architectures for business applications. Secure
connectors provide application business components with
security services when these components need the
services. Each secure connector is structured with
security relevant objects associated with security services
that are needed to make software applications secure. In
this paper, secure connectors are designed for different
types of communication, such as either synchronous or
asynchronous communication, as well as for different
security services, such as authentication, authorization,
confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation. Secure
connectors can make complex applications more
maintainable by separating security concerns from
application concerns in the software architectures. Secure
connectors are applied to the software architecture of an
e-commerce application.
1. Introduction
With the widespread use of internet technologies, the
threats to software applications are increasing day by day.
It has become essential to design secure software
architectures for applications to counter potential threats.
The software architecture can be composed of
components and their connectors in which connectors
encapsulate the details of comm unication between
components. However, mixing security concerns with
business concerns in s oftware architectures makes
applications more complex. Therefore designing security
concerns separately from the busi ness concerns would
make the applications more maintainable.
Several approaches have been de veloped to design
secure applications by means of separation of concerns in
software development. Most of t he approaches have
focused on m aking application business components
secure so that the components perform security services.
But less attention has been paid to connectors, which can
provide security serv ices for application business
components. Security concerns can be encapsulated in
software connectors, which are referred to as secure
connectors, separately from application com ponents
containing application business logic.
This paper describes the secure connectors that are
used to design the software architectures for secure
applications. The secure connectors are de signed
separately from application busine ss components by
considering different communication patterns between the
components as well as security services required by
application components. Each sec ure connector
encapsulates security rele vant objects to provi de
application components with security services. Once
secure connectors are m ade, they can be reused for
different applications if they match both the required
security services and re quired communication pattern
between application components. In this paper, secure
connectors are applied to the software architecture of an
e-commerce application.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 prese nts
existing approaches to implementing security concerns in
software applications syste ms. Section 3 desc ribes the
secure connectors for synchronous and asynchronous
communication between application components. Section
4 concludes this paper.
2. Related Work
Related work focuses on approaches to d esigning
software architectures for secure applications.
Banerjee et. al. [1] identified s everal critical
dimensions of software security and related them to the
building blocks of software architecture. The critical
dimensions for a se cure software system are
authentication, access c ontrol, confidentiality, integrity,
availability and non-repudiation. The software
components, connectors and their confi gurations are t he
architectural building blocks, which can be customized to
enforce the security dimensions. However, no f ormal
methodology has been specified in [1] t o inject security
into software architecture.
The security mechanisms are formalized and
embedded directly into the soft ware architecture via
components in [2]. A component in [ 2] incorporates
multilevel security, in which input and output of that
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