Static detection of security flaws in object-oriented databases

  • Authors:
  • Keishi Tajima

  • Affiliations:
  • Kobe University and Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University, Japan

  • Venue:
  • SIGMOD '96 Proceedings of the 1996 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

Access control in function granularity is one of the features of many object-oriented databases. In those systems, the users are granted rights to invoke composed functions instead of rights to invoke primitive operations. Although primitive operations are invoked inside composed functions, the users can invoke them only through the granted functions. This achieves access control in abstract operation level. Access control utilizing encapsulated functions, however, easily causes many "security flaws" through which malicious users can bypass the encapsulation and can abuse the primitive operations inside the functions. In this paper, we develop a technique to statically detect such security flaws. First, we design a framework to describe security requirements that should be satisfied. Then, we develop an algorithm that syntactically analyzes program code of the functions and determines whether given security requirements are satisfied or not. This algorithm is sound, that is, whenever there is a security flaw, it detects it.