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The Entitlement Management component of WSO2 Carbon facilitates the management and control of policies defined in XACML. The key functions of this component include:are listed below.

See also:

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• Writing XACML policies Policies in WSO2 Identity Server

• Writing XACML3 Policies in WSO2 Identity Server

For more general information on XACML, please see the following:

Introducing XACML

XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) is an XML-based language for access control that has been standardized by the Technical Committee of the OASIS consortium. XACML is popular as a fine grain authorization method among the community. However, there are aspects of XACML which surpass it being just a fine grain authorization mechanism.

Although XACML was introduced as a strand standard by OASIS in 2003, not many organisations that have been adapted it yet. This is because most of the organizations have not shown interest in moving towards a XACML solution for authorization. The following may be some reasons for this:

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To summarize, XACML describes both an access control policy language, request/response language and reference architecture. The policy language is used to express access control policies (who can do what when). The request/response language expresses queries about whether a particular access should be allowed (requests) and describes answers to those queries(responses). The reference architecture proposes a standard for deployment of necessary software modules within an infrastructure to allow efficient enforcement of policies.

Why XACML

Most of the organizations still use legacy systems with inbuilt authorization logic. Sometimes, one organization contains a large number of information systems and applications that each system or application uses for their own process of authorization. Today, authorization has become more complex because users within organizations as well as outside the organization need access to shared data and have the need to collaborate efficiently. Therefore It has been very hard to manage those legacy, custom authorization systems. However, XACML offers a solution to this problem.

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• is a standard which is ratified by OASIS standards organization.
• is a policy language implemented using XML.
• supports Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) and evaluation can be done with the additional data retrieved from Policy Information Point (PIP) which is defined by the XACML reference architecture.
• contains reference architecture which is provided to externalize the authorization system. The Policy Decision Point (PDP) offers authorization as a service in your infrastructure. Authorization algorithms can be removed from the application logic and applications can query the PDP via their own Policy Enforcement Points (PEP).
• provides fine-grained authorization with higher level of abstraction by means of policies and rules.
• supports dynamic evaluation of policies by using the Policy Information Point (PIP).

Improvements in XACML 3.0

The XACML 3.0 core specification highlights the following main changes in comparison with XACML 2.0.

Custom attribute categories

Custom attribute categories can be defined with XACML 3.0. However, in XACML 2.0, attributes have been organized into subject, resource, environment or action. For example, consider that you want to create an attribute category called “foo” in your policy and request. You can do it with XACML 3.0 without any issue. According to the XACML 3.0 policy schema, the category of XACML element is identified by a XML attribute called “Category”. 

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<AttributeDesignator AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id" Category="resource" DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string"/>

Improvements in Obligation

There are several improvements with Obligation in XACML 3.0 when compared to 2.0.

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In XACML 2.0, obligations can only be added to policies and policy sets. However, with XACML 3.0, rules can also contain obligations.

Introducing Advice

Advice is a newly introduced feature with XACML 3.0 which is similar to obligations. PEPs do not have to comply with advice statements; PEPs can consider or discard the statement. A common scenario is to explain why something was denied: “User bob is denied because he does not have a valid email”.

Improvements in Target

Since it is possible to define custom attribute categories, there are improvements in some related elements in the XACML 3.0 policy, when compared to 2.0. With XACML 3.0, the Target element can be used to define more complex authorization logic within itself when compared with 2.0.

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<Target>
	 <AnyOf>
		 <AllOf>
			 <Match MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-regexp-match">
				 <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">foo</AttributeValue>
				 <AttributeDesignator MustBePresent="false" Category="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:attribute-category:resource" AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id" DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string"/>
			 </Match>
			 <Match MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
				 <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">bar1</AttributeValue>
				 <AttributeDesignator MustBePresent="false" Category="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:attribute-category:action"
 AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:action:action-id" DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string"/>
			 </Match>
		 </AllOf>
		 <AllOf>
			 <Match MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
				 <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">bar2</AttributeValue>
				 <AttributeDesignator MustBePresent="false" Category="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:attribute-category:action"
 AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:action:action-id" DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string"/>
			 </Match>
		 </AllOf>
	 </AnyOf>
</Target>

More Functions and Algorithms

XACML3 has introduced new String functions such as:

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Improvements in XPath

New XPath data type is introduced with XACML 3.0. In XACML 2.0, XPath is defined as a String and cannot define the context that the namespace prefix is going to resolve. Also XPath based multiple decisions scheme is introduced with XACML 3.0. 

Improvement in XACML Request and Response

As it is possible to define custom attribute categories, many types of attribute categories can be in the XACML 3.0 request. XACML 2.0 request can contain only subject, resource, environment or action categories.

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• Request attributes that are defined in the XACML response.
• Applicable policy ids for a given XACML request are defined in the XACML response.

Multiple Decision Profile

This is new profile which comes with XACML 3.0 and is not included in the XACML3 core specification. However, this is very useful for performance improvement between PEP and PDP. This is especially the case since PEP can request decisions for multiple requests in one XACML request.

Administrative Delegation Profile

This is also a new profile which comes with XACML 3.0. This allows you to define policies about who can write policies about what. For example, “Bob may issue a policy but only about resources in department X”.