Skip to main content

A Data-Centric Approach to Insider Attack Detection in Database Systems

  • Conference paper
Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 6307))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The insider threat against database management systems is a dangerous security problem. Authorized users may abuse legitimate privileges to masquerade as other users or to maliciously harvest data. We propose a new direction to address this problem. We model users’ access patterns by profiling the data points that users access, in contrast to analyzing the query expressions in prior approaches. Our data-centric approach is based on the key observation that query syntax alone is a poor discriminator of user intent, which is much better rendered by what is accessed. We present a feature-extraction method to model users’ access patterns. Statistical learning algorithms are trained and tested using data from a real Graduate Admission database. Experimental results indicate that the technique is very effective, accurate, and is promising in complementing existing database security solutions. Practical performance issues are also addressed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Owasp top 10 2007 (2007), http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2007

  2. Owasp-sql injection prevention cheat sheet (2008), http://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet

  3. Acharya, S., Gibbons, P.B., Poosala, V., Ramaswamy, S.: Join synopses for approximate query answering. In: SIGMOD Conference, pp. 275–286 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Agrawal, R., Srikant, R.: Privacy-preserving data mining. In: Proc. of the ACM SIGMOD Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD 2000), pp. 439–450 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Babcock, B., Chaudhuri, S., Das, G.: Dynamic sample selection for approximate query processing. In: SIGMOD Conference, pp. 539–550 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bishop, C.M.: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. Springer, Heidelberg (October 2007)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bishop, M.: The insider problem revisited. In: Proc. of the 2005 Workshop on New Security Paradigms (NSPW 2005), pp. 75–76 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Brackney, R., Anderson, R.: Understanding the Insider Threat: Proceedings of a March 2004 Workshop. RAND Corp. (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Buneman, P., Khanna, S., Tan, W.C.: Why and where: A characterization of data provenance. In: ICDT, pp. 316–330 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Calvanese, D., Giacomo, G.D., Lenzerini, M.: On the decidability of query containment under constraints. In: Proc. of the ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS 1998), pp. 149–158 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Cappelli, D.: Preventing insider sabotage: Lessons learned from actual attacks (2005), http://www.cert.org/archive/pdf/InsiderThreatCSI.pdf

  12. Chaudhuri, S., Motwani, R., Narasayya, V.R.: On random sampling over joins. In: SIGMOD Conference, pp. 263–274 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Chung, C.Y., Gertz, M., Levitt, K.: Demids: a misuse detection system for database systems. In: Integrity and Internal Control Information Systems: Strategic Views on the Need for Control, pp. 159–178. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  14. CSO Magazine, US Secret Service, CERT, Microsoft: 2007 E-Crime Watch Survey (2007), http://www.sei.cmu.edu/about/press/releases/2007ecrime.html

  15. Fonseca, J., Vieira, M., Madeira, H.: Online detection of malicious data access using dbms auditing. In: Proc. of the 2008 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2008), pp. 1013–1020 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Haas, P.J., Hellerstein, J.M.: Ripple joins for online aggregation. In: SIGMOD Conference, pp. 287–298 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Hu, Y., Panda, B.: Identification of malicious transactions in database systems. In: Proc. of the 7th International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium, pp. 329–335 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Kamra, A., Terzi, E., Bertino, E.: Detecting anomalous access patterns in relational databases. The VLDB Journal 17(5), 1063–1077 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kenthapadi, K., Mishra, N., Nissim, K.: Simulatable auditing. In: Proc. of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2005), pp. 118–127 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Kruegel, C., Vigna, G.: Anomaly detection of web-based attacks. In: Proc. of the 10th ACM Conference on Computers and Communications Security (CCS 2003), pp. 251–261 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Lee, S.Y., Low, W.L., Wong, P.Y.: Learning fingerprints for a database intrusion detection system. In: Gollmann, D., Karjoth, G., Waidner, M. (eds.) ESORICS 2002. LNCS, vol. 2502, pp. 264–280. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Lee, V.C., Stankovic, J., Son, S.H.: Intrusion detection in real-time database systems via time signatures. In: Proc. of the Sixth IEEE Real Time Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2000), p. 124 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Liu, P.: Architectures for intrusion tolerant database systems. In: Proc. of the 18th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2002), p. 311 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Maier, D., Ullman, J.D., Vardi, M.Y.: On the foundations of the universal relation model. ACM Trans. on Database Syst. 9(2), 283–308 (1984)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  25. Olken, F., Rotem, D.: Simple random sampling from relational databases. In: VLDB, pp. 160–169 (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Ramasubramanian, P., Kannan, A.: Intelligent multi-agent based database hybrid intrusion prevention system. In: Benczúr, A.A., Demetrovics, J., Gottlob, G. (eds.) ADBIS 2004. LNCS, vol. 3255, pp. 393–408. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Roichman, A., Gudes, E.: Diweda – detecting intrusions in web databases. In: Proc. of the 22nd Annual IFIP WG 11.3 Working Conference on Data and Applications Security, pp. 313–329 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Sandhu, R., Ferraiolo, D., Kuhn, R.: The nist model for role based access control. In: Proc. of the 5th ACM Workshop on Role Based Access Control (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Schneier, B.: Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World. John Wiley and Sons, New York (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Schonlau, M., DuMouchel, W., Ju, W., Karr, A., Theus, M., Vardi, Y.: Computer intrusion: Detecting masquerades. Statistical Science 16(1), 58–74 (2001)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  31. Spalka, A., Lehnhardt, J.: A comprehensive approach to anomaly detection in relational databases. In: DBSec, pp. 207–221 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Srivastava, A., Sural, S., Majumdar, A.K.: Database intrusion detection using weighted sequence mining. Journal of Computers 1(4), 8–17 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Stonebraker, M.: Implementation of integrity constraints and views by query modification. In: SIGMOD Conference, pp. 65–78 (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Valeur, F., Mutz, D., Vigna, G.: A learning-based approach to the detection of sql attacks. In: Julisch, K., Krügel, C. (eds.) DIMVA 2005. LNCS, vol. 3548, pp. 123–140. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  35. Wenhui, S., Tan, D.: A novel intrusion detection system model for securing web-based database systems. In: Proc. of the 25th International Computer Software and Applications Conference on Invigorating Software Development (COMPSAC 2001), p. 249 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Yao, Q., An, A., Huang, X.: Finding and analyzing database user sessions. In: Proc. of Database Systems for Advanced Applications, pp. 283–308 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Mathew, S., Petropoulos, M., Ngo, H.Q., Upadhyaya, S. (2010). A Data-Centric Approach to Insider Attack Detection in Database Systems. In: Jha, S., Sommer, R., Kreibich, C. (eds) Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection. RAID 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6307. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15512-3_20

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15512-3_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15511-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15512-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics