Chapter

Chapter224
Database Security

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

1 Introduction to Database Security
Issues
 Types of Security
 Legal and ethical issues
 Policy issues
 System-related issues
 The need to identify multiple security levels

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

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

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

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

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

Introduction to Database
Security Issues (4)
 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

Introduction to Database
Security Issues (5)
 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

Introduction to Database
Security Issues (6)
 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

Introduction to Database
Security Issues (7)
 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

1.2 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

1.2 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

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

1.3 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

1.3 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

1.3 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.1Types 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.1Types 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.1Types of Discretionary Privileges(3)
 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.1Types of Discretionary Privileges(4)
 To control the granting and revoking of relation privileges,
each relation R in a database is assigned an 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 an 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.1Types of Discretionary Privileges(5)
 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.1Types of Discretionary Privileges(6)
 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.2 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.3 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.4 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.5 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;

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.5 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;

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.5 An Example (3)

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2.5 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

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.5 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.5 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;

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.5 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

2.6 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3 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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3 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).

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3.1 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3.1 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3.2 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3.2 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

3.2 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

4 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

4 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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4 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

4 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

5 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

5.1 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 © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

5.1 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.

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe

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

Copyright © 2011 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe