Abstract

: We introduce Delegation Logic (DL), a logic-based knowledge representation (i.e., language) that deals with authorization in large-scale, open, distributed systems. Of central importance in any system for deciding whether requests should be authorized in such a system are delegation of authority, negation of authority, and conflicts between authorities. DL's approach to these issues and to the interplay among them borrows from previous work on delegation and trust management in the computer-security literature and previous work on negation and conflict handling in the logic-programming and non-monotonic reasoning literature, but it departs from previous work in some crucial ways. In this introductory paper, we present the syntax and semantics of DL and explain our novel design choices. This first paper focuses on delegation, including explicit treatment of delegation depth and delegation to complex principals; a forthcoming companion paper focuses on negation. Compared to previous lo...

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