Strong and Provably Secure Database Access Control

Existing SQL access control mechanisms are extremely limited. Attackers can leak information and escalate their privileges using advanced database features such as views, triggers, and integrity constraints. This is not merely a problem of vendors lagging behind the state-of-the-art. The theoretical foundations for database security lack adequate security definitions and a realistic attacker model, both of which are needed to evaluate the security of modern databases. We address these issues and present a provably secure access control mechanism that prevents attacks that defeat popular SQL database systems.Comment: A short version of this paper has been published in the proceedings of the 1st IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P 2016

SQL Injection in Oracle: An Exploration of Vulnerabilities

Structured Query Language (SQL) injection is one of the most devastating vulnerabilities to impact a business, as it can lead to the exposure of sensitive information stored in an application’s database. SQL Injection can compromise usernames, passwords, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card details. It is the vulnerability that results when an attacker achieves the ability to influence SQL queries that an application passes to a back-end database. The attacker can often leverage the syntax and capabilities of SQL, as well as the power and flexibility of supporting database functionality and operating system functionality available to the database to compromise the web application. In this article we demonstrate two non-web based SQL Injection attacks one of which can be carried out by executing a stored procedure with escalating privileges. We present the unique way in which Oracle handles single and double quotes in strings because, as shown in this paper, this is one of the features of the language that can be exploited in the construction of an injection attack. Recommendations on how to resolve these vulnerabilities are proposed

ORACLE DATABASE SECURITY

This paper presents some security issues, namely security database system level, data level security, user-level security, user management, resource management and password management. Security is a constant concern in the design and database development. Usually, there are no concerns about the existence of security, but rather how large it should be. A typically DBMS has several levels of security, in addition to those offered by the operating system or network. Typically, a DBMS has user accounts that require a login password to be authenticated to access the data.data security, password administration, Oracle HTTP Server, OracleAS, access control

Development of grid frameworks for clinical trials and epidemiological studies

E-Health initiatives such as electronic clinical trials and epidemiological studies require access to and usage of a range of both clinical and other data sets. Such data sets are typically only available over many heterogeneous domains where a plethora of often legacy based or in-house/bespoke IT solutions exist. Considerable efforts and investments are being made across the UK to upgrade the IT infrastructures across the National Health Service (NHS) such as the National Program for IT in the NHS (NPFIT) [1]. However, it is the case that currently independent and largely non-interoperable IT solutions exist across hospitals, trusts, disease registries and GP practices – this includes security as well as more general compute and data infrastructures. Grid technology allows issues of distribution and heterogeneity to be overcome, however the clinical trials domain places special demands on security and data which hitherto the Grid community have not satisfactorily addressed. These challenges are often common across many studies and trials hence the development of a re-usable framework for creation and subsequent management of such infrastructures is highly desirable. In this paper we present the challenges in developing such a framework and outline initial scenarios and prototypes developed within the MRC funded Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) project [2]

Hierarchical Role-Based Access Control with Homomorphic Encryption for Database as a Service

Database as a service provides services for accessing and managing customers data which provides ease of access, and the cost is less for these services. There is a possibility that the DBaaS service provider may not be trusted, and data may be stored on untrusted server. The access control mechanism can restrict users from unauthorized access, but in cloud environment access control policies are more flexible. However, an attacker can gather sensitive information for a malicious purpose by abusing the privileges as another user and so database security is compromised. The other problems associated with the DBaaS are to manage role hierarchy and secure session management for query transaction in the database. In this paper, a role-based access control for the multitenant database with role hierarchy is proposed. The query is granted with least access privileges, and a session key is used for session management. The proposed work protects data from privilege escalation and SQL injection. It uses the partial homomorphic encryption (Paillier Encryption) for the encrypting the sensitive data. If a query is to perform any operation on sensitive data, then extra permissions are required for accessing sensitive data. Data confidentiality and integrity are achieved using the role-based access control with partial homomorphic encryption.Comment: 11 Pages,4 figures, Proceedings of International Conference on ICT for Sustainable Developmen

SafeWeb: A Middleware for Securing Ruby-Based Web Applications

Web applications in many domains such as healthcare and finance must process sensitive data, while complying with legal policies regarding the release of different classes of data to different parties. Currently, software bugs may lead to irreversible disclosure of confidential data in multi-tier web applications. An open challenge is how developers can guarantee these web applications only ever release sensitive data to authorised users without costly, recurring security audits. Our solution is to provide a trusted middleware that acts as a “safety net” to event-based enterprise web applications by preventing harmful data disclosure before it happens. We describe the design and implementation of SafeWeb, a Ruby-based middleware that associates data with security labels and transparently tracks their propagation at different granularities across a multi-tier web architecture with storage and complex event processing. For efficiency, maintainability and ease-of-use, SafeWeb exploits the dynamic features of the Ruby programming language to achieve label propagation and data flow enforcement. We evaluate SafeWeb by reporting our experience of implementing a web-based cancer treatment application and deploying it as part of the UK National Health Service (NHS)