DRAGOON: An Information Accountability System for High-Performance Databases

Abstract

Regulations and societal expectations have recently emphasized the need to mediate access to valuable databases, even access by insiders. Fraud occurs when a person, often an insider, tries to hide illegal activity. Companies would like to be assured that such tampering has not occurred, or if it does, that it will be quickly discovered and used to identify the perpetrator. At one end of the compliance spectrum lies the approach of restricting access to information and on the other that of information accountability. We focus on effecting information accountability of data stored in high-performance databases. The demonstrated work ensures appropriate use and thus end-to-end accountability of database information via a continuous assurance technology based on cryptographic hashing techniques. A prototype tamper detection and forensic analysis system named DRAGOON was designed and implemented to determine when tampering(s) occurred and what data were tampered with. DRAGOON is scalable, customizable, and intuitive. This work will show that information accountability is a viable alternative to information restriction for ensuring the correct storage, use, and maintenance of databases on extant DBMSes.