Building A Secure Database using Self-protecting Objects

Martin S Olivier and Sebastiaan H von Solms

1991

Citation information

MS Olivier and SH von Solms, "Building A Secure Database using Self-protecting Objects," Proceedings of the Sixth South African Computer Symposium, Caledon, South Africa, July 1991

Abstract

In current database systems the responsibility for enforcing security is often given to the various application programs. Even where the Database Management System (DBMS) does supply security mechanisms, a single application program often handles sensitive transactions for some users and therefore needs a high clearance for accessing data - this may render the provided mechanisms inadequate. Furthermore, the user's identity is often blurred because the user has many `software agents' acting on its behalf - especially in distributed environments. A simple mapping between subjects and objects is no longer possible.

This paper proposes a model for extending Object-Oriented Database Systems to enable objects themselves to ensure security - ie to protect themselves. This extension is based on the concept of `baggage' - baggage is collected from all components involved in any request; this baggage may then be verified by the object against its personal security profile before any method is executed.

Keywords

Security, Secure DBMS, Object-oriented, Path Context Model (PCM)

BibTeX entry

@INPROCEEDINGS(caledon,
  AUTHOR={Martin S Olivier and SH von Solms},
  TITLE={Building A Secure Database using Self-protecting Objects},
  BOOKTITLE={Proceedings of the Sixth South African Computer Symposium},
  ADDRESS={Caledon, South Africa},
  MONTH={July},
  YEAR={1991} )

Full text

This paper is an earlier version of MS Olivier and SH von Solms, "Building a Secure Database using Self-protecting Objects", Computers & Security, 11, 3, 259-271, 1992, and the interested reader is referred to that paper.


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