A Formal Approach to Detecting Security Flaws in Object-Oriented Databases

Detecting security aws is important in order to keep the database secure. A security aw in object-oriented databases means that a user can infer the result of an unpermitted method only from permitted methods. Although a database management system enforces access control by an authorization, security aws can occur under the authorization. The main aim of this paper is to show an e cient decision algorithm for detecting a security aw under a given authorization. This problem is solvable in polynomial time in practical cases by reducing it to the congruence closure problem. This paper also mentions the problem of nding a maximal subset of a given authorization under which no security aw exists. key words: object-oriented database, authorization, security aw, term rewriting system