W van Staden and MS Olivier, "A Virtual Machine for Security in a Relational Database Management System: Design Issues," in Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Information Security South Africa Conference (ISSA2004), Midrand, South Africa, June/July 2004 (Published electronically)
Virtual Machines (VMs) have been applied in many situations in order to solve computing problems. One of the more interesting aspects of the application of VMs is in the arena of computer security. A prime example of the application of VMs as security mechanisms is that of packet filters, in which the VM is used to execute domain specific programs to determine the fate of all packets that arrive on a network interface.
Another example in which programs are used to enforce security is the Java VM. The Java security model makes use of a SecurityManager class that is used by the Java libraries to ensure that local security policies aren't violated. The SecurityManager class is compiled to Java bytecode that is executed by the Java VM in order to enforce security. This clearly indicates that using programmable security in a VM in a commercial environment can be accomplished readily.
In a similar fashion it is possible to create a VM that can be used for access control in a relational database management system. The use of a VM in such a scenario can provide more expressiveness and flexibility than standard access control mechanisms are capable of.
This paper reflects upon the nature of such a VM by considering aspects of the VM that are important for its application in a relational database management system. This is done in order to create a framework on which a possible implementation can be built.
Virtual Machine, Relational Database Management Systems, Access Control
@INPROCEEDINGS(vmrdbms,
AUTHOR={Wynand van Staden and Martin S Olivier},
TITLE={A Virtual Machine for Security in a Relational Database
Management System: Design Issues},
BOOKTITLE={Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Information Security South Africa
Conference (ISSA2004)},
ADDRESS={Midrand, South Africa},
MONTH={June/July},
YEAR={2004},
NOTE={Published electronically} )
The full text may be downloaded from http://mo.co.za/open/vmrdbms.pdf (PDF, 58K).
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