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1. Auditing DBMSes through Forensic Analysis

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDE.2018.00219  

   Wagner, James (April 2018, 2018 IEEE 34th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE))

   The pervasive use of databases for the storage of critical and sensitive information in many organizations has led to an increase in the rate at which databases are exploited in computer crimes. While there are several techniques and tools available for database forensics, they mostly assume apriori database preparation, such as relying on tamper-detection software to already be in place or use of detailed logging. Alternatively, investigators need forensic tools and techniques that work on poorly-configured databases and make no assumptions about the extent of damage in a database. In this paper, we present our database forensics methods, which are capable of examining database content from a database image without using any log or system metadata. We describe how these methods can be used to detect security breaches in untrusted environments where the security threat arose from a privileged user (or someone who has obtained such privileges). 

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2. Establishing Independent Audit Mechanisms for Database Management Systems

   Rasin, Alexander; Wagner, James; Heart, Karen; Grier, Jonathan (October 2018, 18th Annual IEEE Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security)

   The pervasive use of databases for the storage of critical and sensitive information in many organizations has led to an increase in the rate at which databases are exploited in computer crimes. While there are several techniques and tools available for database forensic analysis, such tools usually assume an apriori database preparation, such as relying on tamper-detection software to already be in place and the use of detailed logging. Further, such tools are built-in and thus can be compromised or corrupted along with the database itself. In practice, investigators need forensic and security audit tools that work on poorlyconfigured systems and make no assumptions about the extent of damage or malicious hacking in a database. In this paper, we present our database forensics methods, which are capable of examining database content from a storage (disk or RAM) image without using any log or file system metadata. We describe how these methods can be used to detect security breaches in an untrusted environment where the security threat arose from a privileged user (or someone who has obtained such privileges). Finally, we argue that a comprehensive and independent audit framework is necessary in order to detect and counteract threats in an environment where the security breach originates from an administrator (either at database or operating system level). 

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3. DB3F & DF-Toolkit:The Database Forensic File Format and the Database Forensic Toolkit

   Wagner, James; Rasin, Alexander; Heart, Karen; Jacob, Rebecca; Grier, Jonathan (January 2019, DFRWS 2019)

   The majority of sensitive and personal user data is stored in different Database Management Systems (DBMS). For example, Oracle is frequently used to store corporate data, MySQL serves as the back-end storage for most webstores, and SQLite stores personal data such as SMS messages on a phone or browser bookmarks. Each DBMS manages its own storage (within the operating system), thus databases require their own set of forensic tools. While database carving solutions have been built by multiple research groups, forensic investigators today still lack the tools necessary to analyze DBMS forensic artifacts. The unique nature of database storage and the resulting forensic artifacts require established standards for artifact storage and viewing mechanisms in order for such advanced analysis tools to be developed. In this paper, we present 1) a standard storage format, Database Forensic File Format (DB3F), for database forensic tools output that follows the guidelines established by other (file system) forensic tools, and 2) a view and search toolkit, Database Forensic Toolkit (DF-Toolkit), that enables the analysis of data stored in our database forensic format. Using our prototype implementation, we demonstrate that our toolkit follows the state-of-the-art design used by current forensic tools and offers easy-to-interpret database artifact search capabilities. 

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4. SysGen: system state corpus generator

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3407023.3409202  

   Lenard, Ben; Wagner, James; Rasin, Alexander; Grier, Jonathan (August 2020, ARES '20: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security)

   null (Ed.)

   Security investigations often rely on forensic tools to deliver the necessary supporting evidence. It is therefore imperative that forensic tools are scientifically tested in both their accuracy and capabilities. The primary means to develop and validate forensic tools is by evaluating them against a set of known answers (i.e., a data corpus). While researchers have long recognized the need for standardized forensic corpora, there are few such tools or datasets available, particularly for database management systems (DBMS). In fact, there are currently no publicly available tools that can generate a DBMS dataset for forensic testing. In this paper, we share SysGen, a customizeable data generator and a pre-built corpus that offers a reference for most major relational DBMSes. The pre-built corpus includes individual DBMS files, the full disk snapshot, the RAM snapshot, and network packets taken from a set of clean virtual machines. SysGen can be easily adapted to execute a custom workload scenario, capturing a new data corpus; it can also create other variations of full system snapshots, even beyond DBMS testing. 

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5. DBCompliant: Extending Database Management Systems to Support Compliance Functionality

   Rasin, Alexander; Scope, Nick; Lenard, Ben; Reyad, Moaz; Wagner, James (July 2024, The 29th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA))

   Data privacy policy requirements are a quickly evolving part of the data management domain. Healthcare (e.g., HIPAA), financial (e.g., GLBA), and general laws such as GDPR or CCPA impose controls on how personal data should be managed. Relational databases do not offer built-in features to support data management features to comply with such laws. As a result, many organizations implement ad-hoc solutions or use third party tools to ensure compliance with privacy policies. However, external compliance framework can conflict with the internal activity in a database (e.g., trigger side-effects or aborted transactions). In our prior work, we introduced a framework that integrates data retention and data purging compliance into the database itself, requiring only the support for triggers and encryption, which are already available in any mainstream database engine. In this demonstration paper, we introduce DBCompliant – a tool that demonstrates how our approach can seamlessly integrate comprehensive policy compliance (defined via SQL queries). Although we use PostgreSQL as our back-end, DBCompliant could be adapted to any other relational database. Finally, our approach imposes low (less than 5%) user query overhead. 

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