Abstract
Any protection mechanism opens an unexpected channel of communication, the so-called covert channel. The Integrity Checker of a database is a protection mechanism, against data inconsistencies. As such, it opens a covert channel which can be used to thwart the mechanism which ensures confidentiality. Therefore, confidential data can be unveiled leading to a « the more semantic, the less secure » contradiction. The paper studies this contradiction in strictly defined situations: confidentiality is of discretionary type, consistency is ensured by binary integrity constraints and data of the database are the only knowledge used. The approach is relational. The expressive power of the relational model makes it possible to express both the formal properties on which unveilings are grounded and their computation.
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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Delannoy, X.C., Del Vigna, C. (1996). Binary integrity constraints against confidentiality. In: Wagner, R.R., Thoma, H. (eds) Database and Expert Systems Applications. DEXA 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1134. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0034687
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0034687
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