Bule Hora University

Department of Computer Science

Course Title:- Advanced Database System

BHU/CS/2024
 Chapter Outline
v Introduction to DB Security issues
v Discretionary Access Control Based on Granting/Revoking of Privileges
v Mandatory Access Control for Multilevel Security
v Statistical DB Security
v Flow Control
v Encryption and Public Key Infrastructures

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 Introduction to DB Security issues
• Types of Security
– Legal and ethical issues
– Policy issues
– System-related issues
– The need to identify multiple security levels

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 Introduction to Database Security Issues (2)
• Threats to databases
– Loss of integrity
– Loss of availability
– Loss of confidentiality
• To protect databases against these types of threats four kinds of countermeasures
can be implemented:
– Access control
– Inference control
– Flow control
– Encryption

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 Introduction to Database Security Issues (3)
• A DBMS typically includes a database security and authorization subsystem
that is responsible for ensuring the security portions of a database against
unauthorized access.
• Two types of database security mechanisms:
– Discretionary security mechanisms
– Mandatory security mechanisms
• The security mechanism of a DBMS must include provisions for restricting
access to the database as a whole
– This function is called access control and is handled by creating user
accounts and passwords to control login process by the DBMS.
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 Introduction to Database Security Issues (4)
• The security problem associated with databases is that of controlling the
access to a statistical database, which is used to provide statistical
information or summaries of values based on various criteria.
– The countermeasures to statistical database security problem is called inference
control measures.
• Another security is that of flow control, which prevents information from
flowing in such a way that it reaches unauthorized users.
• Channels that are pathways for information to flow implicitly in ways that
violate the security policy of an organization are called covert channels.

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 Introduction to Database Security Issues (5)
• A final security issue is data encryption, which is used to protect sensitive
data (such as credit card numbers) that is being transmitted via some
type communication network.
• The data is encoded using some encoding algorithm.
– An unauthorized user who access encoded data will have difficulty deciphering it,
but authorized users are given decoding or decrypting algorithms (or keys) to
decipher data.

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 Database Security and the DBA
• The database administrator (DBA) is the central authority for
managing a database system.
– The DBA’s responsibilities include
• granting privileges to users who need to use the system
• classifying users and data in accordance with the policy of the
organization
• The DBA is responsible for the overall security of the database
system.

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 Database Security and the DBA (2)
• The DBA has a DBA account in the DBMS
– Sometimes these are called a system or superuser account
– These accounts provide powerful capabilities such as:
1. Account creation
2. Privilege granting
3. Privilege revocation
4. Security level assignment
– Action 1 is access control, whereas 2 and 3 are discretionarym and 4 is used to
control mandatory authorization

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 Access Protection, User Accounts, and Database Audits
• Whenever a person or group of person s need to access a database
system, the individual or group must first apply for a user account.
– The DBA will then create a new account id and password for the
user if he/she deems there is a legitimate need to access the
database
• The user must log in to the DBMS by entering account id and
password whenever database access is needed.
• The database system must also keep track of all operations on the
database that are applied by a certain user throughout each login
session.
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 Access Protection, User Accounts, and Database Audits(2)
• To keep a record of all updates applied to the database and of the
particular user who applied each update, we can modify system log,
which includes an entry for each operation applied to the database that
may be required for recovery from a transaction failure or system crash.
• If any tampering with the database is suspected, a database audit is
performed
– A database audit consists of reviewing the log to examine all accesses and
operations applied to the database during a certain time period.
• A database log that is used mainly for security purposes is sometimes
called an audit trail.
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 Discretionary Access Control Based on Granting and
Revoking Privileges
• The typical method of enforcing discretionary access control in a
database system is based on the granting and revoking privileges.
Types of Discretionary Privileges
• The account level:
– At this level, the DBA specifies the particular privileges that each
account holds independently of the relations in the database.
• The relation level (or table level):
– At this level, the DBA can control the privilege to access each
individual relation or view in theBHU
database. 12
 Types of Discretionary Privileges(cont’d)
• The privileges at the account level apply to the capabilities provided to
the account itself and can include
– the CREATE SCHEMA or CREATE TABLE privilege, to create a schema or base
relation;
– the CREATE VIEW privilege;
– the ALTER privilege, to apply schema changes such adding or removing attributes
from relations;
– the DROP privilege, to delete relations or views;
– the MODIFY privilege, to insert, delete, or update tuples;
– and the SELECT privilege, to retrieve information from the database by using a
SELECT query.
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 Types of Discretionary Privileges(cont’d)
• The second level of privileges applies to the relation level
– This includes base relations and virtual (view) relations.
• The granting and revoking of privileges generally follow an authorization
model for discretionary privileges known as the access matrix model
where
– The rows of a matrix M represents subjects (users, accounts, programs)
– The columns represent objects (relations, records, columns, views, operations).
– Each position M(i,j) in the matrix represents the types of privileges (read, write,
update) that subject i holds on object j.

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 Types of Discretionary Privileges(cont’d)
• To control the granting and revoking of relation privileges, each relation
R in a database is assigned and owner account, which is typically the
account that was used when the relation was created in the first place.
– The owner of a relation is given all privileges on that relation.
– In SQL2, the DBA can assign and owner to a whole schema by creating the
schema and associating the appropriate authorization identifier with that
schema, using the CREATE SCHEMA command.
– The owner account holder can pass privileges on any of the owned relation to
other users by granting privileges to their accounts.

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 Types of Discretionary Privileges(cont’d)
• In SQL the following types of privileges can be granted on each individual
relation R:
– SELECT (retrieval or read) privilege on R:
• Gives the account retrieval privilege.
• In SQL this gives the account the privilege to use the SELECT statement to
retrieve tuples from R.
– MODIFY privileges on R:
• This gives the account the capability to modify tuples of R.
• In SQL this privilege is further divided into UPDATE, DELETE, and INSERT
privileges to apply the corresponding SQL command to R.
• In addition, both the INSERT and UPDATE privileges can specify that only
certain attributes can be updated by the account.
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 Types of Discretionary Privileges(cont’d)
• In SQL the following types of privileges can be granted on
each individual relation R (contd.):
– REFERENCES privilege on R:
• This gives the account the capability to reference relation R when
specifying integrity constraints.
• The privilege can also be restricted to specific attributes of R.
• Notice that to create a view, the account must have SELECT
privilege on all relations involved in the view definition.

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 Specifying Privileges Using Views
• The mechanism of views is an important discretionary authorization
mechanism in its own right. For example,
– If the owner A of a relation R wants another account B to be able to
retrieve only some fields of R, then A can create a view V of R that includes
only those attributes and then grant SELECT on V to B.
– The same applies to limiting B to retrieving only certain tuples of R; a view
V’ can be created by defining the view by means of a query that selects only
those tuples from R that A wants to allow B to access.

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 Revoking Privileges
• In some cases it is desirable to grant a privilege to a user
temporarily. For example,
– The owner of a relation may want to grant the SELECT privilege to a
user for a specific task and then revoke that privilege once the task is
completed.
– Hence, a mechanism for revoking privileges is needed. In SQL, a
REVOKE command is included for the purpose of canceling privileges.

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 Propagation of Privileges using the GRANT OPTION
• Whenever the owner A of a relation R grants a privilege on R to another
account B, privilege can be given to B with or without the GRANT
OPTION.
• If the GRANT OPTION is given, this means that B can also grant that
privilege on R to other accounts.
– Suppose that B is given the GRANT OPTION by A and that B then grants the
privilege on R to a third account C, also with GRANT OPTION. In this way,
privileges on R can propagate to other accounts without the knowledge of the
owner of R.
– If the owner account A now revokes the privilege granted to B, all the privileges
that B propagated based on that privilege should automatically be revoked by the
system.
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 An Example
• Suppose that the DBA creates four accounts,
– A1, A2, A3, A4
• and wants only A1 to be able to create base relations. Then the DBA must issue the
following GRANT command in SQL
GRANT CREATETAB TO A1;
• In SQL2 the same effect can be accomplished by having the DBA issue a CREATE
SCHEMA command as follows:
CREATE SCHAMA EXAMPLE AUTHORIZATION A1;

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 An Example(2)
• User account A1 can create tables under the schema called EXAMPLE.
• Suppose that A1 creates the two base relations EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT
– A1 is then owner of these two relations and hence all the relation privileges on each of them.
• Suppose that A1 wants to grant A2 the privilege to insert and delete tuples in both
of these relations, but A1 does not want A2 to be able to propagate these privileges
to additional accounts:
GRANT INSERT, DELETE ON
EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT TO A2;

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An Example(3)

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 An Example(4)
• Suppose that A1 wants to allow A3 to retrieve information from either of the two
tables and also to be able to propagate the SELECT privilege to other accounts.
• A1 can issue the command:
GRANT SELECT ON EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT
TO A3 WITH GRANT OPTION;
• A3 can grant the SELECT privilege on the EMPLOYEE relation to A4 by issuing:
GRANT SELECT ON EMPLOYEE TO A4;
– Notice that A4 can’t propagate the SELECT privilege because GRANT OPTION
was not given to A4

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 An Example(5)
• Suppose that A1 decides to revoke the SELECT privilege on the
EMPLOYEE relation from A3; A1 can issue:
REVOKE SELECT ON EMPLOYEE FROM A3;
• The DBMS must now automatically revoke the SELECT privilege on
EMPLOYEE from A4, too, because A3 granted that privilege to A4 and
A3 does not have the privilege any more.

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 An Example(6)
• Suppose that A1 wants to give back to A3 a limited capability to SELECT from the EMPLOYEE
relation and wants to allow A3 to be able to propagate the privilege.
– The limitation is to retrieve only the NAME, BDATE, and ADDRESS attributes and only for
the tuples with DNO=5.
• A1 then create the view:
CREATE VIEW A3EMPLOYEE AS
SELECT NAME, BDATE, ADDRESS
FROM EMPLOYEE
WHERE DNO = 5;
• After the view is created, A1 can grant SELECT on the view A3EMPLOYEE to A3 as follows:
GRANT SELECT ON A3EMPLOYEE TO A3
WITH GRANT OPTION;

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 An Example(7)
• Finally, suppose that A1 wants to allow A4 to update only the SALARY attribute of
EMPLOYEE;
• A1 can issue:
GRANT UPDATE ON EMPLOYEE (SALARY) TO A4;
– The UPDATE or INSERT privilege can specify particular attributes that may be updated or
inserted in a relation.
– Other privileges (SELECT, DELETE) are not attribute specific.

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 Specifying Limits on Propagation of Privileges
• Techniques to limit the propagation of privileges have been
developed, although they have not yet been implemented in most
DBMSs and are not a part of SQL.
– Limiting horizontal propagation to an integer number i means that an
account B given the GRANT OPTION can grant the privilege to at
most i other accounts.
– Vertical propagation is more complicated; it limits the depth of the
granting of privileges.

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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security
• The discretionary access control techniques of granting and revoking
privileges on relations has traditionally been the main security
mechanism for relational database systems.
• This is an all-or-nothing method:
– A user either has or does not have a certain privilege.
• In many applications, and additional security policy is needed that
classifies data and users based on security classes.
– This approach as mandatory access control, would typically be combined with
the discretionary access control mechanisms.

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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(2)
• Typical security classes are top secret (TS), secret (S), confidential (C),
and unclassified (U), where TS is the highest level and U the lowest: TS ≥
S≥C≥U
• The commonly used model for multilevel security, known as the Bell-
LaPadula model, classifies each subject (user, account, program) and
object (relation, tuple, column, view, operation) into one of the security
classifications, T, S, C, or U:
– Clearance (classification) of a subject S as class(S) and to the classification of an
object O as class(O).
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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(3)
• Two restrictions are enforced on data access based on the
subject/object classifications:
– Simple security property: A subject S is not allowed read access to an
object O unless class(S) ≥ class(O).
– A subject S is not allowed to write an object O unless class(S) ≤
class(O). This known as the star property (or * property).

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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(4)
• To incorporate multilevel security notions into the relational database model, it is
common to consider attribute values and tuples as data objects.
• Hence, each attribute A is associated with a classification attribute C in the schema,
and each attribute value in a tuple is associated with a corresponding security
classification.
• In addition, in some models, a tuple classification attribute TC is added to the
relation attributes to provide a classification for each tuple as a whole.
• Hence, a multilevel relation schema R with n attributes would be represented as
– R(A1,C1,A2,C2, …, An,Cn,TC)
• where each Ci represents the classification attribute associated with attribute Ai.

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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(5)
• The value of the TC attribute in each tuple t – which is the
highest of all attribute classification values within t – provides a
general classification for the tuple itself, whereas each Ci provides
a finer security classification for each attribute value within the
tuple.
– The apparent key of a multilevel relation is the set of attributes that
would have formed the primary key in a regular(single-level) relation.

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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(6)
• A multilevel relation will appear to contain different data to subjects
(users) with different clearance levels.
– In some cases, it is possible to store a single tuple in the relation at a higher
classification level and produce the corresponding tuples at a lower-level
classification through a process known as filtering.
– In other cases, it is necessary to store two or more tuples at different
classification levels with the same value for the apparent key.
• This leads to the concept of polyinstantiation where several tuples can
have the same apparent key value but have different attribute values for
users at different classification levels.

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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(7)
• In general, the entity integrity rule for multilevel relations states
that all attributes that are members of the apparent key must
not be null and must have the same security classification within
each individual tuple.
• In addition, all other attribute values in the tuple must have a
security classification greater than or equal to that of the
apparent key.
– This constraint ensures that a user can see the key if the user is
permitted to see any part of the tuple at all.
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 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based Access Control for
Multilevel Security(8)
• Other integrity rules, called null integrity and interinstance
integrity, informally ensure that if a tuple value at some
security level can be filtered (derived) from a higher-classified
tuple, then it is sufficient to store the higher-classified tuple
in the multilevel relation.

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 Comparing Discretionary Access Control and Mandatory
Access Control
• Discretionary Access Control (DAC) policies are characterized by a high
degree of flexibility, which makes them suitable for a large variety of
application domains.
– The main drawback of DAC models is their vulnerability to malicious attacks,
such as Trojan horses embedded in application programs.

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 Comparing Discretionary Access Control and Mandatory
Access Control(2)
• By contrast, mandatory policies ensure a high degree of protection in a
way, they prevent any illegal flow of information.
• Mandatory policies have the drawback of being too rigid and they are
only applicable in limited environments.
• In many practical situations, discretionary policies are preferred because
they offer a better trade-off between security and applicability.

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 Role-Based Access Control
• Role-based access control (RBAC) emerged rapidly in the 1990s as a proven
technology for managing and enforcing security in large-scale enterprisewide
systems.
• Its basic notion is that permissions are associated with roles, and users are assigned
to appropriate roles.
• Roles can be created using the CREATE ROLE and DESTROY ROLE commands.
– The GRANT and REVOKE commands discussed under DAC can then be used to assign and
revoke privileges from roles.

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 Role-Based Access Control(2)
• RBAC appears to be a viable alternative to traditional discretionary and
mandatory access controls; it ensures that only authorized users are given
access to certain data or resources.
• Many DBMSs have allowed the concept of roles, where privileges can be
assigned to roles.
• Role hierarchy in RBAC is a natural way of organizing roles to reflect the
organization’s lines of authority and responsibility.

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 Role-Based Access Control(3)
• Another important consideration in RBAC systems is the possible
temporal constraints that may exist on roles, such as time and duration
of role activations, and timed triggering of a role by an activation of
another role.
• Using an RBAC model is highly desirable goal for addressing the key
security requirements of Web-based applications.
• In contrast, discretionary access control (DAC) and mandatory access
control (MAC) models lack capabilities needed to support the security
requirements emerging enterprises and Web-based applications.

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 Access Control Policies for E-Commerce and the Web
• E-Commerce environments require elaborate policies that go beyond
traditional DBMSs.
– In an e-commerce environment the resources to be protected are not only
traditional data but also knowledge and experience.
– The access control mechanism should be flexible enough to support a wide
spectrum of heterogeneous protection objects.
• A related requirement is the support for content-based access-control.

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 Access Control Policies for E-Commerce and the Web(2)
• Another requirement is related to the heterogeneity of subjects, which
requires access control policies based on user characteristics and
qualifications.
– A possible solution, to better take into account user profiles in the formulation of
access control policies, is to support the notion of credentials.
– A credential is a set of properties concerning a user that are relevant for security
purposes
• For example, age, position within an organization
– It is believed that the XML language can play a key role in access control for e-
commerce applications.
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 Introduction to Statistical Database Security
• Statistical databases are used mainly to produce statistics on various
populations.
• The database may contain confidential data on individuals, which should
be protected from user access.
• Users are permitted to retrieve statistical information on the populations,
such as averages, sums, counts, maximums, minimums, and standard
deviations.

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 Introduction to Statistical Database Security(2)
• A population is a set of tuples of a relation (table) that satisfy
some selection condition.
• Statistical queries involve applying statistical functions to a
population of tuples.

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 Introduction to Statistical Database Security(3)
• For example, we may want to retrieve the number of individuals in a
population or the average income in the population.
– However, statistical users are not allowed to retrieve individual data, such as the
income of a specific person.
• Statistical database security techniques must prohibit the retrieval of
individual data.
• This can be achieved by prohibiting queries that retrieve attribute values
and by allowing only queries that involve statistical aggregate functions
such as COUNT, SUM, MIN, MAX, AVERAGE, and STANDARD
DEVIATION.
– Such queries are sometimes called statistical queries.
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 Introduction to Statistical Database Security(4)
• It is DBMS’s responsibility to ensure confidentiality of information about
individuals, while still providing useful statistical summaries of data about
those individuals to users. Provision of privacy protection of users in a
statistical database is paramount.
• In some cases it is possible to infer the values of individual tuples from a
sequence statistical queries.
– This is particularly true when the conditions result in a population consisting of a
small number of tuples.

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 Introduction to Flow Control
• Flow control regulates the distribution or flow of information among
accessible objects.
• A flow between object X and object Y occurs when a program reads
values from X and writes values into Y.
– Flow controls check that information contained in some objects does not flow
explicitly or implicitly into less protected objects.
• A flow policy specifies the channels along which information is allowed to
move.
– The simplest flow policy specifies just two classes of information:
• confidential (C) and nonconfidential (N)
– and allows all flows except those from class C to class N.
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 Covert Channels
• A covert channel allows a transfer of information that violates the
security or the policy.
• A covert channel allows information to pass from a higher classification
level to a lower classification level through improper means.

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 Covert Channels(2)
• Covert channels can be classified into two broad categories:
– Storage channels do not require any temporal synchronization, in that
information is conveyed by accessing system information or what is otherwise
inaccessible to the user.
– Timing channel allow the information to be conveyed by the timing of events or
processes.
• Some security experts believe that one way to avoid covert channels is for
programmers to not actually gain access to sensitive data that a program
is supposed to process after the program has been put into operation.

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 Encryption and Public Key Infrastructures
• Encryption is a means of maintaining secure data in an insecure
environment.
• Encryption consists of applying an encryption algorithm to data
using some prespecified encryption key.
• The resulting data has to be decrypted using a decryption key to
recover the original data.

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 The Data and Advanced Encryption Standards
• The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is a system developed by the U.S.
government for use by the general public.
– It has been widely accepted as a cryptographic standard both in the United
States and abroad.
• DES can provide end-to-end encryption on the channel between the
sender A and receiver B.

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 The Data and Advanced Encryption Standards(2)
• DES algorithm is a careful and complex combination of two of the
fundamental building blocks of encryption:
– substitution and permutation (transposition).
• The DES algorithm derives its strength from repeated application of
these two techniques for a total of 16 cycles.
– Plaintext (the original form of the message) is encrypted as blocks of 64 bits.

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 The Data and Advanced Encryption Standards(3)
• After questioning the adequacy of DES, the National Institute of
Standards (NIST) introduced the Advanced Encryption Standards (AES).
– This algorithm has a block size of 128 bits and thus takes longer time to crack.

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 Public Key Encryption
• In 1976 Diffie and Hellman proposed a new kind of cryptosystem, which
they called public key encryption.
• Public key algorithms are based on mathematical functions rather than
operations on bit patterns.
– They also involve the use of two separate keys
• in contrast to conventional encryption, which uses only one key.
– The use of two keys can have profound consequences in the areas of
confidentiality, key distribution, and authentication.

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 Public Key Encryption(2)
• The two keys used for public key encryption are referred to as
the public key and the private key.
– the private key is kept secret, but it is referred to as private key rather
than a secret key (the word used in conventional encryption to avoid
confusion with conventional encryption).

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 Public Key Encryption(3)
• A public key encryption scheme, or infrastructure, has six ingredients:
– Plaintext: This is the data or readable message that is fed into the algorithm as
input.
– Encryption algorithm: The encryption algorithm performs various
transformations on the plaintext.
– Public and private keys: These are pair of keys that have been selected so that if
one is used for encryption, the other is used for decryption.
• The exec transformations performed by the encryption algorithm depend on
the public or private key that is provided as input.

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 Public Key Encryption(4)
• A public key encryption scheme, or infrastructure, has six
ingredients (contd.):
– Ciphertext:
• This is the scrambled message produced as output. It depends on the
plaintext and the key.
• For a given message, two different keys will produce two different ciphertexts.
– Decryption algorithm:
• This algorithm accepts the ciphertext and the matching key and produces the
original plaintext.

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 Public Key Encryption(5)
• Public key is made for public and private key is known only by
owner.
• A general-purpose public key cryptographic algorithm relies on
– one key for encryption and
– a different but related key for decryption.

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 Public Key Encryption(6)
• The essential steps are as follows:
– Each user generates a pair of keys to be used for the encryption and decryption
of messages.
– Each user places one of the two keys in a public register or other accessible file.
This is the public key. The companion key is kept private (private key).
– If a sender wishes to send a private message to a receiver, the sender encrypts
the message using the receiver’s public key.
– When the receiver receives the message, he or she decrypts it using the receiver’s
private key.
• No other recipient can decrypt the message because only the receiver knows
his or her private key.

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 Public Key Encryption(7)
• The RSA Public Key Encryption algorithm, one of the first public key
schemes was introduced in 1978 by Ron Rivest (R), Adi Shamir (S), and
Len Adleman (A) at MIT and is named after them.
– The RSA encryption algorithm incorporates results from number theory, such as
the difficulty of determining the large prime factors of a large number.
• The RSA algorithm also operates with modular arithmetic – mod n,
where n is the product of two large prime numbers.

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 Public Key Encryption(8)
• Two keys, d and e, are used for decryption and encryption.
– An important property is that d and e can be interchanged.
– n is chosen as a large integer that is a product of two large distinct prime numbers, a and b.
– The encryption key e is a randomly chosen number between 1 and n that is relatively prime to
(a-1) x (b-1).
– The plaintext block P is encrypted as Pe mod n.
– Because the exponentiation is performed mod n, factoring Pe to uncover the encrypted
plaintext is difficult.
– However, the decryption key d is carefully chosen so that (Pe)d mod n = P.
– The decryption key d can be computed from the condition that d x e= 1 mod ((a-1)x(b-1)).
– Thus, the legitimate receiver who knows d simply computes (Pe)d mod n = P and
recovers P without having to factor Pe .

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 Digital Signatures
• A digital signature is an example of using encryption techniques to provide
authentication services in e-commerce applications.
• A digital signature is a means of associating a mark unique to an individual with a
body of text.
– The mark should be unforgettable, meaning that others should be able to check
that the signature does come from the originator.
• A digital signature consists of a string of symbols.
– Signature must be different for each use.
• This can be achieved by making each digital signature a function of the message that it is
signing, together with a time stamp.
– Public key techniques are the means creating digital signatures.

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