User access authorization¶

Once authenticated, users must have an authorization to an Index ID.

What is an Index ID?¶

An Index ID allows the partitioning of indexed data: behind an Index ID, there are:

• encrypted indexes
• and the encrypted version of the data that has been indexed.

This Index ID can be shared between users, with a specific permission. Users can also own multiple Index IDs.

Invocation of any method exposed in the API is conditioned by the validation and compatibility of the claimed permissions.

Permissions¶

sequenceDiagram
  autonumber
  actor User
  participant F as Findex server

  User->>F: User authentication
  User->>F: User create an Index ID
  F->>User: Index ID with admin permission
  User->>F: User grant/revoke permission to another user

There are 3 permissions:

• reader
• writer
• admin

The mechanism is pretty simple:

When a user creates a new Index ID, he becomes the admin of this index. He can then grant other index users the role of reader, writer or admin.

Every server endpoint is protected by this authorization mechanism: the server checks the user’s role before allowing access to the endpoint.

Permission format in database¶

Currently, there is an entry for each user in database. In the case of a key-value database, the key is the user ID (its email) and the value is a list of tuples (permission, index_id) where permission is 1 byte and index_id is an UUID of 16 bytes.

Example¶

Endpoints¶