Developing Secure Objects

Distributed object systems are increasingly popular, and considerable effort is being expended to develop standards for interaction between objects. Some high-level requirements for secure distributed object interaction have been identified. However, there are no guidelines for developing the secure objects themselves. Some aspects of object-oriented design do not translate directly to traditional methods of developing secure systems. In this paper, we identify features of object oriented design that affect secure system development. In addition, we explore ways to derive secure object libraries from existing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) class libraries that lack security, and provide techniques for developing secure COTS libraries with easily modifiable security policies.