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Authorization Concepts

This chapter covers concepts rather than implementation or programming details. See “Authorization Services Tasks” for information about using specific Authorization Services functions in your application.

You should understand the basics of permissions and ownership in BSD and Mac OS X before reading this chapter. See Chapter 13, “Installation and Integration”, of Inside Mac OS X: System Overview for a brief introduction to these concepts. For definitions of terms, see the “Glossary.”

This chapter contains the following sections:

• “Authorization” provides a conceptual overview of the policy-based authorization used by Mac OS X.

• “Authentication” describes how authorization uses authentication.

• “The Security Server” describes how you use Authorization Services in your application to interact with the Security Server.

• “Rights” describes how to name your own rights.

• “The Policy Database” explains how the Security Server uses a policy database to make authorization decisions.

• “The Credentials Cache and the Authentication Dialog” explains how the Security Server determines whether to display an authentication dialog.

• “Scenarios” describes different scenarios that use Authorization Services.

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