Patent ID: 7131143

Claim:
A method of associating a permission set with a code assembly based on evidence characterized by different levels of trust, the method implemented at least in part by a computing device comprising: identifying a first condition for association with the permission set, wherein the first condition references a first element of evidence, wherein the first element of evidence is implicitly trusted and wherein the permission set is used to control operation of the code assembly during run-time; identifying a second condition for association with the permission set, wherein the second condition references a second element of evidence, wherein the second element of evidence is initially untrusted; determining whether the first condition is satisfied by the first element of evidence; determining whether the second element of evidence should be trusted based on the first condition; determining whether the second condition is satisfied by the second element of evidence; associating the permission set with the code assembly, if both the first condition and the second condition are satisfied; evaluating the first condition and the second condition using a logical operation to determine membership of the code assembly in a parent code group; and evaluating the code assembly against membership criteria of a child code group if the code assembly is a member of the parent code group.