Towards a Fail-Safe Approach to Secure Databases

Abstract

In this paper we consider some problems related to database security. We first generalize the definition of compromise to the discovery of the value of some (generally complex) property about a class of individuals. For a given query we define implied queries and impose tests for safe response on both the query and implied queries. It is shown how this approach relates to the "tracker" concept. It is further shown how this approach mitigates to some extent the security problems related to history keeping and to user preknowledge of the database.