Overview#

Cyclic Inheritance is a fault that refers to the problem of privileges inheritance from other users (groups), which also in a chain of inheritance relation inherit back to the user (group)’s privilege.

For example, user x inherits privilege from user y, which inherits privilege from user z, which in turn inherits privilege from user x. Cyclic Inheritance leads to undecidable or infinite access evaluation process.

Cyclic Inheritance exist in any Access Control Model where inheritance is present but can be especially hard to overcome in Nested Groups.

More Information#

There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:

• Groups Are Bad
• Nested Groups