How to develop secure applications with Aspect-Oriented Programming

Abstract

In the last few years several new programming techniques for achieving a better separation of concerns have been defined. One of the most accepted has been Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP). Those attending this tutorial will learn how to improve the modularization, maintainability and evolution of secure applications by using AOP to achieve a better separa- tion of the security concerns (e.g. authentication, authorization, encryption). A running example will be used throughout the tutorial to illustrate how AOP works. The tutorial will principally illustrate the use of the AspectJ programming language, although other AOP languages will be used to cover features that are not included in AspectJ. As a proof of concept we will discuss the use of AOP in the context of the INTER-TRUST project, a STREP project that brings together experts from the security and aspect-oriented research communities to demonstrate that security policies can be dynamically deployed and adapted at runtime using AOP.