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IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems 2005 E88-D(12):2767-2776; doi:10.1093/ietisy/e88-d.12.2767
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Copyright © 2005 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers

Regular Section -- Papers -- Database

Security against Inference Attacks on Negative Information in Object-Oriented Databases*

Yasunori ISHIHARA1, Shuichiro AKO1,2 and Toru FUJIWARA1

1 The authors are with the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Suita-shi, 565-0871 Japan. E-mail: ishihara{at}ist.osaka-u.ac.jp, 2 Presently, with Japan Patent Office.

Inference attacks mean that a user derives information on the execution results of unauthorized queries from the execution results of authorized queries. Most of the studies on inference attacks so far have focused on only inference of positive information (i.e., what value is the execution result of a given unauthorized query). However, negative information (i.e., what value is never the execution result of a given unauthorized query) is also sensitive in many cases. This paper presents the following results on the security against inference attacks on negative information in object-oriented databases. First, inference of negative information is formalized under a model of object-oriented databases called method schemas. Then, the following two types of security problems are defined: (1) Is a given database instance secure against inference attacks on given negative information? (2) Are all of the database instances of a given database schema secure against inference attacks on given negative information? It is shown that the first problem is decidable in polynomial time in the description size of the database instance while the second one is undecidable. A decidable sufficient condition for any database instance of a given database schema to be secure is also proposed. Finally, it is shown that for a monadic schema (i.e., every method has exactly one parameter), this sufficient condition is also a necessary one.

Key Words: object-oriented database, authorization, inference attack, negative information

Manuscript received August 30, 2004. Manuscript revised June 2, 2005.

* A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 4th International Conference on Information and Communications Security (ICICS'02) [10].


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