Oracle Label-Based Security
Restricting access to entire tables or isolating sensitive data into separate databases is a costly operation to administer. Oracle Label Security overcomes the need for such measures by enabling row-level access control. It is available in Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1) Enterprise Edition at the time of writing. Each database table or view has a security policy associated with it. This policy executes every time the table or view is queried or altered. Developers can readily add label-based access control to their Oracle Database applications. Label-based security provides an adaptable way of controlling access to sensitive data. Both users and data have labels associated with them. Oracle Label Security uses these labels to provide security.
1. Virtual Private Database (VPD) Technology
Virtual Private Databases (VPDs) is a feature of the Oracle Enterprise Edition that adds predicates to user statements to limit their access in a transparent manner to the user and the application. The VPD concept allows server-enforced, fine-grained access control for a secure application.
VPD provides access control based on policies. These VPD policies enforce object-level access control or row-level security. It provides an application programming interface (API) that allows security policies to be attached to database tables or views. Using PL/SQL, a host programming language used in Oracle applications, developers and security administrators can implement security policies with the help of stored procedures.7 VPD policies allow developers to remove access security mechanisms from applications and centralize them within the Oracle Database.
VPD is enabled by associating a security “policy” with a table, view, or synonym. An administrator uses the supplied PL/SQL package, DBMS_RLS, to bind a policy function with a database object. When an object having a security policy associated with it is accessed, the function implementing this policy is consulted. The policy function returns a predicate (a WHERE clause) which is then appended to the user’s SQL statement, thus transparently and dynamically modifying the user’s data access. Oracle Label Security is a technique of enforcing row-level security in the form of a security policy.
2. Label Security Architecture
Oracle Label Security is built on the VPD technology delivered in the Oracle Database 11.1 Enterprise Edition. Figure 24.4 illustrates how data is accessed under Oracle Label Security, showing the sequence of DAC and label security checks.
Figure 24.4 shows the sequence of discretionary access control (DAC) and label security checks. The left part of the figure shows an application user in an Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1) session sending out an SQL request. The Oracle DBMS checks the DAC privileges of the user, making sure that he or she has SELECT privileges on the table. Then it checks whether the table has a Virtual Private Database (VPD) policy associated with it to determine if the table is protected using Oracle Label Security. If it is, the VPD SQL modification (WHERE clause) is added to the original SQL statement to find the set of accessible rows for the user to view. Then Oracle Label Security checks the labels on each row, to determine the subset of rows to which the user has access (as explained in the next section). This modified query gets processed, optimized, and executed.
3. How Data Labels and User Labels Work Together
A user’s label indicates the information the user is permitted to access. It also deter-mines the type of access (read or write) that the user has on that information. A row’s label shows the sensitivity of the information that the row contains as well as the ownership of the information. When a table in the database has a label-based access associated with it, a row can be accessed only if the user’s label meet certain criteria defined in the policy definitions. Access is granted or denied based on the result of comparing the data label and the session label of the user.
Compartments allow a finer classification of sensitivity of the labeled data. All data related to the same project can be labeled with the same compartment. Compartments are optional; a label can contain zero or more compartments.
Groups are used to identify organizations as owners of the data with corresponding group labels. Groups are hierarchical; for example, a group can be associated with a parent group.
If a user has a maximum level of SENSITIVE, then the user potentially has access to all data having levels SENSITIVE,CONFIDENTIAL, and UNCLASSIFIED. This user has no access to HIGHLY_SENSITIVE data. Figure 24.5 shows how data labels and user labels work together to provide access control in Oracle Label Security.
As shown in Figure 24.5, User 1 can access the rows 2, 3, and 4 because his maxi-mum level is HS (Highly_Sensitive). He has access to the FIN (Finance) compartment, and his access to group WR (Western Region) hierarchically includes group WR_SAL (WR Sales). He cannot access row 1 because he does not have the CHEM (Chemical) compartment. It is important that a user has authorization for all compartments in a row’s data label to be able to access that row. Based on this example, user 2 can access both rows 3 and 4, and has a maximum level of S, which is less than the HS in row 2. So, although user 2 has access to the FIN compartment, he can only access the group WR_SAL, and thus cannot acces row.
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