A Concurrency control model for multilevel secure object-oriented databases

Abstract

Much attention is being directed toward the development of secure database systems, which are critical for both military and sensitive commercial applications. Most research in security and multilevel secure database management systems (MLS/DBMS) focus on relational systems. However, with the emergence of new and complex applications, research in object-oriented security is gaining more prominence. In this paper, we address the issues of transaction management for multilevel secure object-oriented database systems. We begin by introducing two new security policies specifically designed for OODBs. Later we identify the existence of covert channels in the traditional conflict-serializable concurrency control schedulers and provide an alternative transaction-processing algorithm that ensures both correctness and security. We conclude with a proof of correctness.