Chapter 23

Database Security
and Authorization

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Introduction to Database Security Issues
 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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 2

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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 3

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
discretionary and 4 is used to control mandatory
authorization

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

1.3 Access Protection, User Accounts,
and 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- 5

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

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

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

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

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

2.1Types of Discretionary Privileges(5)
 The second level of privileges applies to the relation
level
 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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 11
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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 12

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

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

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

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

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

2.5 An Example(3)

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

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

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

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

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

3 Mandatory Access Control for Multilevel Security

 MAC classifies data and users based on security classes.

 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

 Clearance level indicates the level of trust given to a person with a

security clearance

 Classification level indicates the level of sensitivity associated with

some information, like that in a document or a computer file.

 Security level is a generic term for either a clearance level or a

classification level
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 23
3 Mandatory Access Control for Multilevel Security

 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, TS, S, C, or U.

 Two restrictions are enforced on data access based on the subject/

object classifications:

1. Simple security property: Subject A is allowed to read object O

only if class(O) ≤ class(A).

2. Star property (* property): Subject A is allowed to write object O

only if class(A) ≤ class(O).

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

3 Mandatory Access Control for Multilevel Security

 To incorporate multilevel security into relational database, consider

tuples and attributes as data objects.

 Associate each attribute with a classification attribute C.

 Associate each tuple with a tuple classification TC.

R(A1,C1,A2,C2, …, An,Cn,TC)

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

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

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

DAC versus MAC
1. Systems based on MAC are considered more secure
than systems based on DAC.

2. MAC based systems does not offer same degree of

flexibility offered by DAC based systems.

3. In DAC, owner decides whether to grant access to a

resource or not. In MAC owner does not have control
and cannot decide to grant access to a resource.

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

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.

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

3.2 Role-Based Access Control
 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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 30

3.2 Role-Based Access Control
 Its basic notion is that permissions are associated
with roles, and users are assigned to appropriate
roles.
 Roles are typically job functions and positions
within an organization.
 Users may be assigned multiple roles.
 Hierarchy of an organization is reflected in the
roles.
 A higher role includes all access rights of lower
roles.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 31
3.2 Role-Based Access Control

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

3.2 Role-Based Access Control
 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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 33

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

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.

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

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

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 © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 37

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

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

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

6 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.

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

6.1 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.

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

6.1 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.

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

6.1 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.

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

6.2 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- 45

6.2 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).

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

6.2 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.

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

6.2 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.

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

6.2 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.

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

6.2 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.

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

6.2 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.

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

6.2 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 .

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 23- 52

6.3 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- 53

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- 54