Database Security:

An Introduction
Chapter 8
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
5 Encryption & PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

2
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
5 Encryption & PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

3
Introduction to Database Security Issues (1)
 Types of Security:
 Legal and ethical issues
 Policy issues
 System-related issues
 The need to identify multiple security levels

4
Introduction to Database Security Issues (2)
 Three Basic Concepts:
 Authentication: a mechanism that determines whether a
user is who he or she claims to be.
 Authorization: the granting of a right or privilege, which
enables a subject to legitimately have access to a system
or a system’s objects.
 Access Control: a security mechanism (of a DBMS) for
restricting access to a system’s objects (the database) as a
whole.

5
5
Introduction to Database Security Issues (3)
 Threats:
 Any situation or event, whether intentional or
unintentional, that will adversely affect a system and
consequently an organization.
 Threats to:
 Computer systems
 Databases

6
Threats to
Computer
Systems

7
Scope of Data Security Needs

 Must protect databases & the servers on which they

reside.
 Must administer & protect the rights of internal database
users.
 Must guarantee the confidentiality of ecommerce
customers as they access the database.
 With the Internet continually growing, the threat to data
traveling over the network increases exponentially.

8
Introduction to Database Security Issues (4)
 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

9
Introduction to Database Security Issues (5)
 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

10
Introduction to Database Security Issues (6)
 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.

11
Introduction to Database Security Issues (7)
 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.

12
Introduction to Database Security Issues (8)
 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.

13
Introduction to Database Security Issues (9)
 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.

14
Database Security and the DBA (1)
 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.

15
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
discretionary and 4 is used to control mandatory
authorization.

16
Access Protection, User Accounts, and
Database Audits (1)
 Whenever a person or group of persons 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.

17
Access Protection, User Accounts, and
Database Audits (2)
 The database system must also keep track of all
operations on the database that are applied by a
certain user throughout each login session.
 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.

18
Access Protection, User Accounts, and
Database Audits (3)
 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.

19
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
5 Encryption & PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

20
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
 User can protect what they own.
 Owner may grant access to other.
 Owner can define the type of access
(read/write/execute/…) given to others.

 The typical method of enforcing discretionary access

control in a database system is based on the granting
and revoking privileges.

21
Types of Discretionary Privileges (1)
 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 the database.

22
Types of Discretionary Privileges (2)
 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.

23
Types of Discretionary Privileges (3)
 The second level of privileges applies to the relation level
 This includes base relations and virtual (view) relations.
 In SQL the following types of privileges can be granted on
each individual relation R:
 SELECT (retrieval or read) privilege on R:
 This gives the account retrieval privilege.
 The SELECT statement is used to retrieve tuples from R.
 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.

24
Types of Discretionary Privileges (4)
 In SQL the following types of privileges can be granted on
each individual relation R (contd.):
 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.

 Notice that to create a view, the account must have SELECT

privilege on all relations involved in the view definition.

25
Types of Discretionary Privileges (5)
 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.

26
Types of Discretionary Privileges (6)

Access matrix model

27
Types of Discretionary Privileges (7)
 To control the granting and revoking of relation
privileges, for each relation R in a database:
 The owner of a relation is given all privileges on that
relation.
 The owner account holder can pass privileges on any of
the owned relation to other users by granting privileges
to their accounts.
 The owner account holder can also take back the
privileges by revoking privileges from their accounts.

28
Specifying Privileges Using Views
 The mechanism of views is an important
discretionary authorization mechanism in its own
right.
 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.

29
Revoking Privileges
 In some cases it is desirable to grant a privilege to a
user temporarily.
 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.

30
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.

31
Limiting the horizontal propagation

32
Limiting the vertical propagation

33
An Example (1)
 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 SCHEMA EXAMPLE AUTHORIZATION A1;

34
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;

35
An Example (3)

36
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.

37
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.

38
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 A3_EMPLOYEE AS
SELECT NAME, BDATE, ADDRESS
FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE DNO = 5;
 After the view is created, A1 can grant SELECT on the view
A3_EMPLOYEE to A3 as follows:
GRANT SELECT ON A3_EMPLOYEE TO A3
WITH GRANT OPTION;

39
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.

40
Inherent weakness of DAC
 Unrestricted DAC allows information from an object
which can be read by a subject to be written to any
other object
 Bob is denied access to file Y, so he asks Alice to copy Y to
X that he can access.
 Suppose our users are trusted not to do this
deliberately. It is still possible for Trojan Horses to
copy information from one object to another.

41 41
Trojan horse Example (1)

42 42
Trojan horse Example (2)

43
Trojan horse Example (3)

44
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
5 Encryption & PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

45
Mandatory Access Control
 Granting access to the data on the basis of users’
clearance level and the sensitivity level of the data.
 Bell-LaPadula’s two principles: no read-up & no write-
down secrecy.

46
Bell-LaPadula Model
 Typical security classes are top secret (TS), secret
(S), confidential (C), and unclassified (U), where TS
is the highest level and U is the lowest one: TS ≥ S ≥
C≥U
 Two restrictions are enforced on data access based
on the subject/object classifications:
 A subject S is not allowed read access to an object O
unless class(S) ≥ class(O). This is known as the simple
security property.
 A subject S is not allowed to write an object O unless
class(S) ≤ class(O). This known as the star property (or *
property).

47
Why star property?

48
Why star property?

49
Why star property?

50
Multilevel relation (1)
 Multilevel relation: MAC + relational database model.
 Data objects: attributes and tuples.
 Each attribute A is associated with a classification
attribute C.

 A tuple classification attribute TC is to provide a

classification for each tuple as a whole, the highest of
all attribute classification values.
R(A1,C1,A2,C2, …, An,Cn,TC)

 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.

51
Multilevel relation (2)

 A multilevel relation will appear to contain different

data to subjects (users) with different security levels.

52
Multilevel relation (3)
 SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEE;

 A user with security level S:

53
Multilevel relation (4)
 SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEE;

 A user with security level C:

54
Multilevel relation (5)
 SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEE;

 A user with security level U:

55
Properties of Multilevel relation
 Read and write operations: satisfy the No Read-Up and
No Write-Down principles.
 Entity integrity: 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.
 Polyinstantiation: where several tuples can have the same
apparent key value but have different attribute values for
users at different classification levels.

56
Polyinstantiation example (1)

 A user with security level C:

57
Polyinstantiation example (2)
 A user with security level C:
UPDATE EMPLOYEE
SET Job_performance = ‘Excellent’
WHERE Name = ‘Smith’;

Polyinstantiation of the Smith tuple.

58
Comparing DAC and MAC (1)
 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.

59
Comparing DAC and MAC (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.

60
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
5 Encryption & PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

61
Role-Based Access Control (1)
 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.

62
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.

63
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.

64
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Encryption & PKI (Public Key
5
Infrastructure)

65
Encryption (1)
 The encoding of the data by a special algorithm that
renders the data unreadable by any program without
the decryption key.
 Symmetric cryptography: sender and receiver use the
same key.
 Asymmetric cryptography: encryption & decryption
keys.

66
Encryption (2)
 Plaintext is the original content which is readable as
textual material. Plaintext needs protecting.
 Ciphertext is the result of encryption performed on
plaintext using an algorithm. Ciphertext is not
readable.
 Cryptosystems = encryption + decryption algorithms.
 Encryption, decryption process needs keys.

67
Encryption (3)
 Symmetric (shared-/secret-key) cryptosystem: the
same key for (en/de)cryption algorithms (KE = KD).
 Asymmetric (public-key) cryptosystem: public &
private keys (KE ≠ KD).
KE
Plaintext Ciphertext
Hello, À¿¾«§¶
Encryption
This content is 
confidential 
…………………
…................... Cryptosystem
…………………
01000100……..
…..
….
Decryption

KD
68
Encryption (4)
 (Most popular) Symmetric techniques: DES, AES.
 The same key is used for both encryption and decryption.
 Faster than encryption and decryption in public-key (PK)
cryptosystems.
 Less security comparing to encryption and decryption in
PK cryptosystems.
 Asymmetric techniques: RSA, DSA.

69
Symmetric techniques (1)
 DES: Data Encryption Standard
 A message is divided into 64-bit blocks
 Key: 56 bits
 Brute-force or exhaustive key search attacks: Some hours.
 Triple DES: run the DES algorithm a multiple number of
times using different keys
 : plaintext; : ciphertext
 : encryption by key ; : decryption by key ;
 Encryption: 𝒌𝟏 𝒌𝟐 𝒌𝟏
 Decryption: 𝒌𝟏 𝒌𝟐 𝒌𝟏
 Be compatible with DES when 1= 2;
 The triple DES can also use three different keys.

70
Symmetric techniques (2)
 AES: Advanced Encryption Standard (Rijndael)
 Jan 2, 1997, NIST announced the initiation of a new
symmetric-key block cipher algorithm, AES, as the new
encryption standard to replace the DES.
 Oct 2, 2000: Rijndael was selected. Rijndael is designed
by two Belgium cryptographers: Daemen and Rijmen.
 Rijndael is a block cipher with a variable block size and
variable key size.
 The key size and the block size can be independently
specified to 128, 192 or 256 bits.

71
Asymmetric techniques (1)
 RSA: named after 3 inventors Rivest, Shamir, Adleman
 Two keys: public key and private key
 Public key is used for encrytion.
 Private key is used for decrytion

72
Asymmetric techniques (2)
 Encryption key: public key
 Decryption key: private key
 Asymmetric techniques: more secure but expensive in
terms of computational costs

Use public key of receiver

to encrypt the message
Sender encryption key Receiver

Encrypted message
using a symmetric key

73
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) (1)

CA
(certificate authority)

Alice Bob

74
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) (2)
 How does PKI work?

75
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.

76
How digital signature works?

77
Digital certificates
 One concern with the public key approach: must
ensure that you are encrypting to the correct person’s
public key.
 A solution: digital certificates.
 A form of credentials (like a physical passport).
 Included with a person’s public key to verify that a key
is valid.

78
Components of a digital certificate
 A digital certificate
 A public key
 Certificate info (identifying information such as name, ID)
 One (or more) digital signatures

 Certificates are used when it is necessary to exchange

public keys with someone (when you cannot manually
exchange via a diskette or USB drive).

79
Contents

1 Introduction to Database Security Issues

2 Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
3 Mandatory Access Control (MAC)
4 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
5 Encryption & PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

80
81