Advanced DBS

Chapter 4
Database Security
and Authorization

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 1

Introduction to Database Security Issues
 Types of Security
 Legal and ethical issues

regarding the right to access certain information—
for example, some information may be deemed to
be private and cannot be accessed legally by
unauthorized organizations or persons.
 Policy issues

at the governmental, institutional, or corporate level
makes sure what kinds of information should not be
made publicly available and what to be made
available.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 2

Introduction to Database Security Issues
 Types of Security
 System-related issues

such as the system levels at which various security
functions should be enforced—for example, whether
a security function should be handled at the
physical hardware level, the operating system level,
or the DBMS level.
 The need to identify multiple security levels

to categorize the data and users based on these
classifications—for example, top secret, secret,
confidential, and unclassified. The security policy of
the organization with respect to permitting access to
various classifications of data must be enforced.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 3
Introduction to Database Security Issues
 Threats to databases
 Loss of integrity

refers to the requirement that information be protected from
improper modification.

Integrity is lost if unauthorized changes are made to the data
by either intentional or accidental acts
 Loss of availability

Database availability refers to making objects available to a
human user or a program to which they have a legitimate right.
 Loss of confidentiality

Database confidentiality refers to the protection of data from
unauthorized disclosure.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 4

Introduction to Database Security Issues
 To protect databases against these types of threats four
kinds of countermeasures can be implemented:
 Access control
 Inference control
 Flow control
 Encryption

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 5

Introduction to Database Security Issues
 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

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 6

 Discretionary security mechanisms

These are used to grant privileges to users,
including the capability to access specific data
files, records, or fields in a specified mode
(such as read, insert, delete, or update).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 7

 Mandatory security mechanisms
 These are used to enforce multilevel security
by classifying the data and users into various
security classes (or levels) and then
implementing the appropriate security policy of
the organization.
 An extension of this is role-based security,
which enforces policies and privileges based on
the concept of organizational roles.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 8

Access Control
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 9

Inference Control
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 10

Flow Control
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 11

Data Encryption
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 12

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 13

Database Security and the DBA
 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

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 14

Access Protection, User Accounts, & Database Audits

 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 15

Access Protection, User Accounts, and
Database Audits
 The database system must also keep track of all
operations on the database that are applied by a
certain user throughout each login session.
 Sequence of database interactions that a user
performs from the time of logging into the time of
logging off is recorded in system log.
 System log also include the account number of
the user and the online computer or device ID
that applied each operation recorded in the log.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 16

Access Protection, User Accounts, and
Database Audits
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 17

Authorization Subsystem

 3 different authorization subsystems.

 Discretionary Access Control

 Mandatory Access Control

 Role Based Access Control

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 18

Discretionary Access Control Based
on Granting and Revoking Privileges
 Based on the granting and revoking privileges.
 Two levels for assigning privileges
 The account level:
 The relation level (or table level):

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 19

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 the
database.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 20

Types of Discretionary Privileges
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 21

Types of Discretionary Privileges
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 22

Types of Discretionary Privileges

 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.
 The owner account holder can pass privileges on any of
the owned relation to other users by granting privileges to
their accounts.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 23
Types of Discretionary Privileges

 The owner account holder can pass privileges on any of the owned
relations to other users by granting privileges to their accounts. In
SQL a GRANT command is also included for the purpose of
cancelling privileges.
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 24

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 25

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 26

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 CREATE TABLE TO A1;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 27

An Example
 User account A1 can create tables
 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;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 28

An Example

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 29

An Example
 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.
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

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 30

An Example
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 31

An Example
 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;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 32

Example
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 33

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 34

Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security
 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).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 35

Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security

 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).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 36

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 37
Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 38

Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security

 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 C i 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 39

Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 40

Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 41

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
DROP ROLE commands.
 The GRANT and REVOKE commands discussed under
DAC can then be used to assign and revoke privileges from
roles.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 42

Inference Control - Introduction to Statistical
Database Security
 Statistical databases are used mainly to
produce statistics on various populations.
(A population is a set of tuples of a relation (table) that satisfy some
selection condition.)
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 43

Introduction to Statistical Database Security
 Statistical queries involve applying statistical
functions to population of tuples.
 Consider the following relation ‘PERSON’.

 An SQL query with the

 condition Sex = ‘M’ specifies the male population;
 condition ((Sex = ‘F’) AND (Last_degree = ‘M.S.’ OR Last_degree = ‘Ph.D.’))
specifies the female population that has an M.S. or Ph.D.degree as their
highest degree;
 condition City = ‘Arbaminch’ specifies the population that lives in Arbaminch.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 44

 In some cases it is possible to infer the values of
individual tuples from a sequence of statistical
queries.
 This is particularly true when the conditions
result in a population consisting of a small
number of tuples.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 45

 As an illustration, consider the following statistical queries:
 Q1: SELECT COUNT (*) FROM PERSON WHERE <condition>;
 Q2: SELECT AVG (Income) FROM PERSONWHERE <condition>;
1. To find the Salary of ‘Netsanet’, and we know that she has a Ph.D.
degree and that she lives in the city of Arbaminch.
2. We issue the statistical query Q1 with the following condition:
(Last_degree=‘Ph.D.’ AND Sex=‘F’ AND City=‘Arbaminch’).
3. If we get a result of 1 for this query, we can issue Q2 with the same
condition and find the Salary of Netsanet.
 Even if the result of Q1 on the preceding condition is not 1 but is a small
number—say 2 or 3—we can issue statistical queries using the functions
MAX, MIN and AVERAGE to identify the possible range of values for the
Salary of ‘Netsanet’.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 46

 Statistical database security techniques

Must prohibit the retrieval of individual data if no statistical
queries are permitted whenever the number of tuples in the
population specified by the selection condition falls below
some threshold.
 Must prohibit queries that retrieve attribute values and allow
queries that involve statistical aggregate functions.
 Must prohibit sequences of queries that refers repeatedly to
the same population of tuples.
 Must introduce slight inaccuracies or noise into the results
of statistical queries deliberately, to make it difficult to
deduce individual information from the results.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 47

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 non-confidential (N)
 and allows all flows except those from class C to class N.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 48

 Access control mechanisms are responsible for checking
users’ authorizations for resource access.
 Flow controls can be enforced by an extended access
control mechanism, which involves assigning a security
class (usually called the clearance) to each running
program.
 The program is allowed to read a particular memory
segment only if its security class is as high as that of the
segment. It is allowed to write in a segment only if its
class is as low as that of the segment. This automatically
ensures that no information transmitted by the person can
move from a higher to a lower class.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 49

 For example, a military program with a secret
clearance can only read from objects that are
unclassified and confidential and can only write
into objects that are secret or top secret.
 In general, flow control mechanisms implement
the controls by assigning a label to each object
and by specifying the security class of the object.
 Labels are then used to verify the flow relations
defined in the model.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 50

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 51

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 pre-specified
encryption key.
 The resulting data has to be decrypted using a
decryption key to recover the original data.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 52
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.
 After questioning the adequacy of DES, the
National Institute of Standards (NIST) introduced
the Advanced Encryption Standards (AES).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 53

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 54

Public Key Encryption
 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).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 55

Public Key Encryption
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 56

Public Key Encryption
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 57

Public Key Encryption
 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.
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 58

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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 59
Data Administration &Database
Administration
 Data Administration: The management of the data
resource, which includes database planning, development
and maintenance of standards, policies and procedures and
conceptual and logical database design.
 Database Administration: The management of the
physical realization of a database system, which includes
physical database design and implementation, setting
security and integrity controls, monitoring system
performance and reorganizing the database, as necessary.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 60
DATA ADMINISTRATION DATABASE ADMINISTRATION
Involved in strategic IS planning Evaluate new DBMS
Determine long term goals. Executes plan to achieve goals.
Enforce standards, policies and procedures Executes standards, policies and procedures
Determines data requirements. Implement data requirements.
Develops conceptual & logical database Develops logical and physical database
design design
Develops and maintains data model Implements physical database design
Coordinates system development Monitors and controls database
Managerial orientation Technical orientation
DBMS-independent DBMS-dependent

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 61

Current Challenge-Database Survivability

 A DBMS, in addition to making every effort to prevent an attack and

detecting one in the event of occurrence, should be able to do the
following:
1. Confinement. Take immediate action to eliminate the attacker’s
access to the system and to isolate or contain the problem to prevent
further spread.
2. Damage assessment. Determine the extent of the problem,
including failed functions and corrupted data.
3. Reconfiguration. Reconfigure to allow operation to continue in a
degraded mode while recovery proceeds.
4. Repair. Recover corrupted or lost data and repair or reinstall failed
system functions to re-establish a normal level of operation.
5. Fault treatment. To the extent possible, identify the weaknesses
exploited in the attack and take steps to prevent a recurrence.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 62

Summary
 1 Database Security and Authorization
 2 Discretionary Access Control
 3 Mandatory Access Control and Role-Based
Access Control for Multilevel Security
 4 Statistical Database Security
 5 Flow Control
 6 Encryption and Public Key Infrastructures

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 63