Pamela Security-Patterns
Introduction to SecurityPatterns library
A significant experiment in PAMELA is the implementation of security patterns weaved on domain code.
Security patterns library was developped in the context of Design patterns and Aspect programming.
In this context, the PAMELA framework is extended to include the notion of Pattern, i.e. a composition of multiple classes. Included to this experiment, the security pattern is specified by expected behavior defined and formalized by a pattern contract. This contract is defined by formal properties and the PAMELA framework ensures the property verification at run-time.
Related to the security pattern implementation, PAMELA enables the definition of additional security behavior to existing Java code.
Patterns are defined in PAMELA using three classes, each one representing a different conceptual level PatternFactory, PatternDefinition, PatternInstances.
To declare a Pattern on existing code, pattern elements such as Pattern Stakeholders and methods need to be annotated with provided security pattern-specific annotations. These annotations will be discovered at run-time by the PatternFactory and stored in PatternDefinition attributes.
Summarizing, implementing Patterns with PAMELA provides the ability to monitor the execution of the application code; the ability to offer extra structural and behavioral features, executed by the PAMELA interpreter; a representation of Patterns as stateful objects. Such objects can then evolve throughout run-time and compute assertions.
Implemented patterns
Security patterns library todays contains following patterns: