Secure SDLC

Quality
• Key elements of ensuring software quality
• Code review
• Interface testing
• Misuse case testing
• Reasons for lack of security in SDLC
• Lack of education on security
• Operating systems and applications were not built on secure
architectures
• Software development procedures have not been security oriented
• Integrating security as an after thought
Software Development Lifecycle

• 5 Phases

• Requirements Gathering - why, what, whom

• Design – how

• Development – coding

• Testing and validation – verify and validate the software

• Release/maintenance – deploy and manage

Project Management
• Project management is an important part of Product
development
• Security management is an important part of project
management
• Statement of Work (SOW)
• Describes the product and customer requirements
• Helps ensure the requirements are clearly understood
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• Project management tool designed to group a projects individual
elements in a organized manner
• Decomposition of a project into tasks and subtasks that result in clearly
defined deliverables
Requirements Gathering Phase
• Understand why the project is needed and what the scope is
• Examine the software’s requirement and proposed functionality
• Evaluate products currently in the market and identifying
demands not currently met
• The following shall be accomplished
• Security requirements

• Security risk assessment

• Privacy risk assessment

• Risk-level acceptance
Design Phase
• Outlines how the product is going to accomplish the requirements
• Process used to describe the requirements and internal behavior
of the software
• Software requirements come from 3 models:
• Informational model – dictates the type of information and how it will be
processed
• Functional model – outlines the tasks the application will carry out
• Behavioral model – explains the states the application will be during
and after specific transitions
• The following should be accomplished
• Attack surface analysis
• Threat modeling
Development Phase
• This the phase were actual development happens

• Programmers are deeply involved

• Design created is broken down into defined deliverables and

programmers develop code

• Computer-aided software engineering tools (CASE) are used by

programmers to generate code, test and carry out debugging
activities
Testing / Validation Phase
• It is important to map the security risks to test cases and code

• Tests should be conducted in an environment that mirrors the

production environment

• Security attacks and penetration testing takes place in this

phase

• Tests should be run to validate against vulnerabilities identified

during earlier stages
Testing Types
• Common testing approach
• Unit testing – Testing individual components in controlled environment, where programmers
validate data structure, logic and boundary conditions
• Integration testing – verifying that components work together as outlined

• Acceptance testing – Ensuring that the code meets customer requirements

• Regression testing – After a change to a system takes place, retesting to ensure functionality,
performance and protection

• Fuzzing
• Technique used to discover flaws and vulnerabilities in software by sending large amounts of
malformed, unexpected or random data in order to trigger failure
• Helps in identifying buffer overflow, DoS vulnerabilities, injection weakness, validation flaws
Software Development Models
• Build and Fix Model

• Waterfall Model

• V-Shaped Model

• Prototyping

• Incremental Model

• Spiral Model

• Rapid Application Development

• Agile Model
Build and Fix Model
• Not a formal SDLC model

• No architecture design is carried out

• Development takes place immediately with no planning involved

• Problems are dealt as they occur

• No formal feedback mechanisms

• Not a proactive method for ensuring quality

• This approach gets the software product out as soon as possible

Waterfall Model
• Uses a linear-sequential life-cycle approach

• Each phase must be completed in entirety before the next phase begins

• Review takes place at the end of each phase to make sure project is on
the right path

• All requirements are gathered in the initial phase and there is no formal
way to integrate changes

• Its a very rigid approach

• Could be used for small projects that have all requirements understood
V-Shaped Model
• Emphasizes the verification and validation of the product at each phase and provides a formal method
of developing testing plans as each coding phase is executed

• Lays out a sequential path of execution process.

• Each phase must be completed before the next phase begins

• Requires testing through-out the development phases

• It is also rigid model, does not allow for flexibility and thus adapting to changes is more difficult and
expensive

• Does not allow for handling of events concurrently

• Does not integrate iterations of phases

• It does not contain risk analysis activities

• Best used when requirements are best understood and scope changes are very small
Prototyping
• Sample product is developed to explore specific approach to a
problem before investing expensive time and resources.

• 3 main model types

Rapid Prototyping Evolutionary Prototype Operational Prototype

• Prototype is quickly created to test
the validity of the current
understanding of the project
requirement
• It is a quick and dirty method of
creating the prototype
• It is not developed to be build upon,
rather discarded after use
• They are built with a goal of
incremental update
• The prototype is continuously
improved upon until it reaches the
final product stage
• Feedback gained in each phase is
used to improve the prototype
• Extension of evolutionary prototype
• It is designed to be implemented
with a production environment as it
is being tweaked
• Feedback is obtained and changes
made within the working site
Incremental Model
• Allows developers to carry out multiple development cycles on a piece of software
throughout its development process

• Similar to multi-waterfall cycle per software as it mature through the development stages

• The working version is produced after the first iteration,

• Advantages
• Allows for changes to take place early, testing uncovers issues quickly, each iteration is easily
manageable, cost is lower, customer gets the functionality earlier, risk of critical changes being
introduced is lower.

• Best used when risk, program complexity, funding, functionality requirements needs to
be understood early in the development cycle
Spiral Model
• Uses an iterative approach to software development

• Places emphasis on risk analysis

• Has 4 main phases

• Determine objectives
• Risk analysis
• Development and test
• Plan the next iteration

• Advantages
• As more information about the project is gatherer it is integrated into the risk analysis process, improve prototype,
test the prototype, allows for testing to take place early, allows new requirements to be addresses as they are
uncovered

• Best suited for complex projects that have fluid requirements

Rapid Application Development
• Relies more on the use of rapid prototyping than on extensive upfront
planning

• Planning is interleaved with the process of developing the software

• Delivery of software can happen in ½ the time compared to waterfall

method

• Combines the use of prototyping and iterative development methods

• Model provides input to allow for the improvement of the prototype

• Allows for customer to be involved during the development phases

Agile Models
• It focuses on incremental and iterative development methods that promotes cross-functional team work
and continuous feedback mechanisms

• It is considered “light weight” – it is nimble, flexible enough to adapt

• The model focuses on small increments of functional code that are created based upon business need

• Focuses on individual interactions instead of process and tools.

• Promotes customer collaboration instead of customer negotiation

• Has ability to respond to change

• It breaks the product down into individual features that are constantly being delivered

• It focuses on user stories

• Development team can take pieces and parts of all the available SDLC models and combine them in a
manner that best suits the project requirement
Agile Model - Scrum
• Most widely adopted Agile methodology

• It is lean and customer focused

• It acknowledges the fact that customer needs will change over time

• It focuses on team collaboration, customer involvement and continuous delivery

• Allows product features to be added, removed, modified at clearly defined points.

• Change points happen at the conclusion of each sprint ~ fixed duration development interval

• Customer is intimately involved in the development process

• Allows product to be iteratively developed and changed as it is being built

Agile Model – Extreme Programming
• Development methodology that makes code reviews to happen
continuously

• This is accomplished using Pair programming ~ one developer

dictates and the other developer types

• This significantly reduces the incidence of errors and improves the

overall quality of the code

• It relies on test-driven development ~ unit tests are written before

the code is developed
Agile Model – Kanban Methodology
• Stresses visual tracking of all tasks so that the team knows which
one to prioritize at what point in time in order to deliver the right
product

• Developed by Toyota

• Allows the development team to better react to unforeseen

requirements
Other models
• Exploratory Model
• Used in instances where clearly defined project objectives are not available.
• Relies on covering a set of specifications likely to affect the final product’s functionality
• Testing is an important part of exploratory development
• Joint Application Development (JAD)
• Uses a team approach in work-shop oriented environment
• Distinguishes itself by the inclusion of members other than coders in the team
• Reuse Model
• Approach development by using progressively developed models
• Reusable models are evolved by gradually modifying pre-existing prototypes to customer specifications
• It drastically reduces development cost and time
• Clean Room
• Attempts to prevent errors or mistakes by following structured and formal methods of developing and
testing
• Used for high-quality and mission-critical applications that will be put through a strict certification process
DevOps
• It is the practice of incorporate development, IT and quality
assurance staff into software development projects to align their
incentives and enable frequent, efficient and reliable releases of
software products
• Its about changing the culture of the organization
• Advantages
• Increases trust within the organization
• Increases job satisfaction
• Improves the morale of project managers
• Allows the multifunctional team to identify potential defects, vulnerabilities,
and frictional points early enough to resolve them
CMMI
• Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a comprehensive,
integrated set of guidelines for developing products and software
• It can be used to evaluate the security engineering practices and
identify ways to improve them
• Describes principles, procedures that underlie software development
process maturity
• Provides a more discipline and repeatable method to improve
software quality
• Provides best practices for an organization to develop a
standardized approach to software development
CMMI Levels

Optimized
• Company has
Managed budgeted and
integrated plans for
• Has formal process in continuous
Defined place to collect and
analyze quantitative
improvement
• Formal procedures data
Repeatable are in place • Metrics are defined
• Has a way to allow and fed into the
• Formal management for quantitative process
Initial structure, change
control and quality
process improvement
improvement program
• Dev process is ad-hoc assurance are in
• No assurance of place
consistency and • Company can
quality properly repeat
processes
throughout each
project
• Does not have formal
process model
defined
Change control Process
• Make a request for change
• Analyze the request
• Develop the implementation strategy
• Calculate the cost of implementation
• Review security implications
• Record the change request
• Submit the change request for approval
• Develop the change
• Report results to management
Software Configuration Management
• Identifies the attributes of software at various points in time and
perform methodical control of changes for the purpose of maintaining
software integrity and traceability throughout SDLC
• SCM should provide the following
• Concurrency Management
• Helps prevent uncontrolled changes when multiple users simultaneously access the
same file
• Versioning
• Deals with keeping track of file revisions; it should create log reports of who made
changes, when and what
• Synchronization
• Allow individuals to check out complete or partial copies of the repositories and work on
the files as needed
Programming Languages
• Machine Language
• Format that the computer’s processor can understand and work with directly
• It is represented in binary and considered the most primitive form of
programming.
• First generation programming language
• Assembly Language
• Considered low-level programing language, it is a symbolic representation of
machine language
• One level above machine language, programmers can use commands
instead of binary codes
• Assemblers are used to convert this language code into machine
understandable format
• Programs written are hardware specific and are not portable
Programming Languages
• High-level Language
• Third-generation language
• They use abstract statements (eg. If-then-else)
• They are easier to work with – programs are easier to write and mistakes are easier
to identify
• They are processor independent
• They are portable and can be used on many different system types
• Very High-level languages
• 4th Generation language
• It enhances the natural language approach
• Focuses on highly abstract algorithms that allow straightforward programming
implementation
• The manual coding required may be ten times less than for the same task on a 3rd
generation language s
Programming Languages
• Natural language
• 5th generation of programming language
• Program creation happens by defining the constrains for achieving a
specified result
• Goal is to create software that can solve problems by itself instead of a
programmer having to develop code to deal with individual and specific
problems
Programming Language
• Assemblers
• Tools that convert assembly language source code into machine code
• Compilers
• Tools that convert high level language statements to machine code for specific
processors
• Allows developers to create software once in high level language and complied for
various platforms
• Interpreter
• Performs the last step of transforming high-level code to machine-level code
• It improves portability
• Major advantage is that the platform independence and memory management
functions are part of the interpreter
• Major disadvantage is that the program cannot run as a stand-alone application but
requires the interpreter to be installed on the local machine
Object Oriented Concepts
• Benefits of Object Oriented Programming
• Modularity

• Differed commitment

• Reusability

• Naturalness

• It also provides functional independence ~ each module addresses a specific sub function of
requirements and has an interface that is easily understood by other parts of the application
• Data hiding is provided by encapsulation, which protects an object’s private data from
outside access

• Abstraction is the capability to suppress unnecessary details so that important, inherent

properties can b examined and reviewed
Polymorphism

• Polymorphism refers to a programming language's ability to process

objects differently depending on their data type or class

• The application will determine what to use at the time of execution

• It takes place when different objects respond to the same command

input or message in different ways

Software Development Concepts
• Data Modelling
• Considers data independently both by the way data is processed and the
component that processes the data
• It follows the data from input to the end and ensures the output is correct
• Data modelling can be used to provide insights into the data and the
relationships that govern it (used in Databases)
• Data Structure
• Data Structure is a way of collecting and organising data in such a way that
we can perform operations on these data in an effective way
• Data Structures is about rendering data elements in terms of some
relationship
• They are structures programmed to store ordered data, so that various
operations can be performed on it easily
Cohesion and coupling
• Cohesion
• Refers to how many different types of tasks a module can carry out
• High cohesion ~ carries one task or tasks that are similar
• High cohesion is better. Any change in the task can be done without
impacting other tasks
• Coupling
• Is a measurement that indicates how much interaction one module
requires to carry out its tasks
• Low (loose) coupling is better, High (tight) coupling means a module
depends upon many other modules
Application Programming Interface
• It specifies a manner in which an software component interacts with
other components

• It encourages software reuse

• Makes software more maintainable by localizing the changes that

need to be made

• It provides reduced effort and improved maintainability.

• A software library is a collection of components that do specific

things that are useful to many other components
Distributed Computing Environment
• It is a standard developed by the Open Group

• It is a client/server framework that is available to many vendors to use within their

products

• It provides RPC service, security service, directory service, time service and
distributed file support

• It is a layer of software that sits on top of network layer and provides services to the
application above it

• DCE and DCOM offer much of the same functionality

• DCOM uses a globally unique identifier (GUID) while DCOM users a universally
unique identifier (UUID)
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
• Open object-oriented standard architecture developed by Object
Management group

• Enables applications to communicate with one another no matter

where the application resides or who developed it

• It defines the API, communication protocol and C2S communication

methods to allow heterogenous applications to work together

• In this model clients request services from objects.

• The model provides standards to build a distributed environment

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
• Contains two parts
• System Oriented Components
• Object oriented brokers (ORB) and object services

• Application Oriented Components

• Application objects and common facilities

• ORB manages all communications between the components and enables them to interact in a
heterogeneous and distributed environment

• ORB works independently of the platforms where the objects reside, it provides greater
interoperability

• It is the middleware that allows the client/server communication to take place

• ORB provides communication between distributed objects

• It provides portability for applications

Component Object Model (COM)
• It allows interprocess communication within one application or
between applications within the same system

• DCOM supports the same model, and also support distributed

interprocess communication

• DCOM enables the programmer to focus on coding, while it has the

library to take care session handling, synchronization, buffering, fault
identification and handling, and data format translation

• DCOM provides ORB like services

Object Linking and Embedding (OLE)
• It provides a way to objects to be shared on a local computer and
to use COM as their foundation

• OLE enables objects to be embedded into documents

• The capability of one program to call another program is called

linking

• Embedding – capability to place a piece of data inside a foreign

program or document
Java Platform
• Java EE defines a client/server model that is object oriented and platform
independent

• It is an enterprise Java computing platform

• Meaning it is a framework that is used to develop enterprise software written mainly
in Java programming language
• It provides APIs for networking services, fault tolerance, security and web services
for large-scale, multitiered network applications.
• It takes advantage of the “Write once, Run Anywhere” capability of Java

• It can handle scalability, concurrency, transactions and various security services for
the client
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• It provides a standardized access to the most needed services for
many different applications at one time

• Services within an SOA are usually provided through web services

• Applications access one centralized place, that provides

functionality they require

• For a service to be able to be used they must be

• Modular, autonomous, loosely coupled, follow standardized service
identification and categorization, provide provisioning and delivery
SOA – Web Services
• A web service allows for web based communication to happen seamlessly using
web-based standards, like SOAP, HTTP, WSDL

• They provide the functional building blogs for the SOA

• Web Services Description Language (WSDL)

• Provides a machine readable description of the specific operations provided by the service

• Universal description, discovery and Integration (UDDI)

• It is an XML based registry that lists available services
• It provides a method for services to be registered by service providers and located by
service consumers
SOA
• Mashup
• A mashup is a technique by which a website or Web application uses data,
presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create a new service
• Open APIs and data sources are commonly aggregated and combined to provide
a more useful and powerful resource

• SOAP
• It is an XML based protocol that encodes messages in a web service environment

• It actually defines an XML schema of how communication is going to take place

• The schema defines how objects communicate directly

SOA
• Cloud Computing
• Method of providing computing as a service rather than as a physical
product
• It provides processing computation capabilities, storage and software
without end user needing to know or worry about the physical location or
configuration of the devices
Mobile Code
• Code that can be transmitted across the network to be executed
by a system at the other end

• Mobile code has been a regular attack vector. It should be used

cautiously

• Java Applets
• Object-oriented, platform independent programming language

• It is used to write small components, applets, which commonly run in a

user’s web browser
Mobile Code
• ActiveX Controls
• They are self-sufficient programs that can be executed in windows
environments
• Can be reused by many applications within one system or different
systems within an environment
• Allows web browser to execute other software applications within the
browser (media files, PDF etc)
• It can be automatically downloaded and executed by web browser

• They have greater access to the users system compared to Java applets
ActiveX vs Java applets

ActiveX Java applet

• It uses • It sets up a
Authenticode sandbox for the
technology, which applet code to
relies on Digital execute thus
certificates and reducing code’s
trusting certificate access to resources
authority within the user’s
computer
Web Environment Threats – Input Validation Attacks
• Path or Directory traversal
• Also known as “dot dot slash” attack
• It is inserting the characters “../” several times into the URL to traverse into the directories that weren’t
supposed to be accessible from the web
• Access to the command shell allows extensive access to the attacker

• Unicode encoding
• Webservers use Unicode to support different applications.
• Attacker using Unicode could make the same directory traversal attack without using “/” but with any of the
Unicode representations of that character

• URL Encoding
• URL encoding replaces unsafe ASCII characters with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. URL encoding
normally replaces a space with a plus (+) sign or with %20
• Attackers found they could bypass filtering techniques and make requests by representing characters
Web Environment Threats – Input Validation Attacks
• Client-side validation
• When the input validation is done at the client before it is even sent to
server to process
• It avoids incomplete requests to be sent to the server and the server
having to send back an error message to the user
• If a server relies only on Client-side validation, it introduces the risk of
depending on the client’s capability to address the threat. It is always
beneficial to also have server-side validation at different degree
Cross-site Scripting (XSS)
• XSS enables attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages
viewed by other users

• A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to

bypass access controls

• 3 different XSS Vulnerabilities

• Nonpersistent XSS

• Persistent XSS

• DOM (Document Object Model)

Cross-site Scripting (XSS)
• Nonpersistent XSS Vulnerability
• also known as Reflected XSS

• The malicious code is executed by the victim’s browser, and

the payload is not stored anywhere; instead, it is returned as
part of the response HTML that the server sends.
• The victim is being tricked into sending malicious code to the
vulnerable web application, which is then reflected back to
the victim’s browser where the XSS payload executes
• It is the most commonly carried out XSS attack

• It is also called Type 1 XSS because the attack is carried out

through a single request / response cycle

http://www.acunetix.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/reflected-xss.png
Cross-site Scripting (XSS)
• Persistent XSS Vulnerability
• Also known as stored or second-order vulnerability

• Targeted against websites that allow users to input data that is stored in a
database in the server
• The attacker posts some text that contains some malicious JavaScript, and when
other users later view the posts, their browsers render the page and execute the
attacker’s JavaScript
• Persistent XSS is less frequent than Non-Persistent XSS

• The damage that Persistent XSS can do is more devastating than the damage
done by Non-Persistent XS
Cross-site Scripting (XSS)
• Document Object Model (DOM) XSS
• Also referred to as local cross-site scripting

• DOM is the standard structure layout to represent to represent HTML and

XML documents in the browser
• The attacker uses DOM environment to modify the original client-side
JavaScript
• This causes the victim browser to execute the resulting abusive JavaScript
code
Parameter Validation
• It is where the application validates the input values before server
application process them within the system
• This is different from input validation, in that, whether the application was
expecting the user to input a value

• It includes pre-validation and post-validation controls

• Pre-validation: Input controls verifying data is in appropriate format and
inline with application specifications prior to submission to the application
• Post-validation: Ensuring application output is as expected
Web Application Security Principles
• These principles help in governing programming practices
• To regulate programing styles and

• Strategically reduce the chances of repeating known bugs

• The first step is to analyse the website architecture

• The clearer and simpler the website is, the easier it is to analyse its various security aspects

• Using encryption
• Helps secure the input/output operations of a web application

• Failing Securely
• Systems that fail securely display friendly error messages without revealing internal system details

• Maintaining an equilibrium between functionality and security

• Best security measures are those that are simple and acceptable
Database Management
• A database is a collection of data that is organized such that it can
be useful for the intended purpose(s)

• A database management system (DBMS) is a software application

that interacts with the user, other applications.

• It also enforces access control, provides data integrity, redundancy

and sets up procedures for data manipulation

• They help store, organize and retrieve information effectively and

efficiently
Database Characteristics
• Any type of database should have the following:
• Consistency among the data held on several servers

• Easier backup procedures

• Transaction persistence

• Fault tolerance

• Sharing

• Controls that implement integrity checking, access control, and the

necessary level of confidentiality
Database Models
• It defines the relationship between different data elements

• Dictates how data can be accessed

• Defines acceptable operations

• The type of integrity offered, and how the data is organized

• Types of database
• Relational

• Hierarchical

• Network

• Object-oriented

• Object-relational
Relational Database Model
• The most widely used model today

• It uses attributes (columns) and tuples (rows) to contain and organize data

• Data is represented in the form of tables

• Each table contains unique rows, columns and cells

• Each cell contains only one data value that represents a specific attribute value
within a given tuple

• A Primary key is the field that links all the data within a record to a unique value

• A foreign key is defined in a second table, but it refers to the primary key in the
first table.
Hierarchical Database Model
• It is the first type of Database model that was created but not common now

• It combines records and fields that are related in a logical tree structure

• In this model, parents can have one child, many children or no children

• It is not flexible in creating relationship between data elements as a relational

database

• They are useful in mapping one-to-many relationships

• It does not use indexes to search procedures, and links cannot be established
between different branches and leaves on different layers

• LDAP is the most common Hierarchical model

Network Database Model
• It is built upon the hierarchical data model

• It allows each data element to have multiple parent and child

records forming a redundant network like structure

• It uses constructs of records and sets

• Records contain fields, which may layout in a hierarchical structure

• Sets define the one-to-many relationships between the different records

• Application has to use its own procedures to obtain data from the
database and then process the data for its needs
Object-oriented Database Model
• It is built upon the hierarchical data model

• It allows each data element to have multiple parent and child records forming a
redundant network like structure

• It uses constructs of records and sets

• Records contain fields, which may layout in a hierarchical structure

• Sets define the one-to-many relationships between the different records

• It has classes to define the attributes and procedures of its objects

• When an application queries for data, it not only returns the data but also the code to
carry out procedures on this data

• It does not depend upon SQL for interactions

Object-relational Database Model
• It is a relational database with a software front end that is writtern
in an OOP language

• Allowing the front end helps the business logic procedures to be

used by requesting applications and the data whithin the databas
Database Programming Interfaces
• Object database connectivity (ODBC)

• Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB)

• ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)

• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)

Object Database Connectivity (ODBC)
• Open Standard application API for accessing Database

• It allows programs to use SQL requests that will access databases

without having to know the proprietary interfaces to the
databases. 

• ODBC is a core component of Microsoft Windows Open Services

Architecture
Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB)
• Separates data into components that run as middleware on a client
or server

• Characteristics
• It’s a replacement for ODBC

• COM-based interfaces provides applications with uniform access to data

• It is limited to being used by Microsoft

• OLE Services can be accessed through ADO

• It allows different apllications to access different types and sources of data

ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)
• It is an API that allows applications to access backend database

• It is a set of ODBC interfaces that exposes the functionality of data sources through
accessible objects

• It uses the OLE DB interface to connect with the database and can be developed with
many different scripting languages

• Characteristics
• It is a high-level data access programming interface

• It’s a set of COM objects for accessing data sources not just database access

• It allows developer to write programs that access data without knowing how the database is
implemented
• SQL commands are not required to access a database when using ADO
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)
• It allows a Java application to communicate with a database

• The application can bridge through ODBC or directly to the database

• Characteristics
• Provides the same functionality as ODBC but is specifically designed for use
by Java database applications
• Has database independent connectivity between the java platform and a wide
range of databases
• It enables the java programs to execute SQL statements
Relational Database Components
Component
Data Definition Language (DDL)
Data Manipulation Language
(DML)
Data Control Language (DCL)
Query Language (QL)
Report Generator
Description
Defines the schema and structure of the database, access
operations and integrity procedures
It examines the data and defines how the data can be
manipulated within the database
Contains all the commands that enable an user to view,
manipulate and use the database
It defines the internal language of the database
Enables users to make requests to the database
Produces user-defined printouts
Data Dictionary
• It is a central collection so data element definitions, schema objects
and reference keys

• It can contain the default values for columns, integrity information, the
names of users, the privileges and roles for users and auditing
information

• It is a tool used to centrally manage parts of a database by controlling

data about the data

• It provides cross-reference between groups of data elements and the

databases
Integrity Services
• Three main types of integrity services provided by Database:
• Semantic Integrity:
• Makes sure structural and semantic rules are followed.

• Referential Integrity:
• Mechanism to ensure no foreign key contains a reference to a primary key of a
nonexistent record or null value

• Entity Integrity:
• Guarantees that tuples are uniquely identified by primary key values; every tuple
must contain one primary value
Integrity Protection Mechanisms
Mechanism Operations

Rollback Operation that ends the current transaction and cancels the current changes to
database. Database returns to its pervious state
Commit Completes a transaction and executes all changes just made by the user. This
ensures that partial changes do not take place and that data is not corrupted
Savepoints Helps to make sure if a system failure occurs, or if an error is detected, the
database can attempt to return to a point before the system crashed.
Having too many savepoints can degrade the performance
Checkpoints When the database software fills up a certain amount of memory, a checkpoint
is initiated. It saves the data from a temporary segment to a temporary file. Its
similar to savepoints
Two-phase The requests for database changes are put into a queue and activated all at
commit once. A pre-commit ensures all database are ready before the commit
command is sent to each database
Database Security Issues
• Aggregation
• Act of combining information from separate sources. This combination
provides new information which the subject does not have the necessary
rights to access
• Combined information has a sensitivity that is greater than that of the
individuals parts

• Inference
• The ability to derive information not explicitly available
Database Security Issues – Control mechanism
• Content and Context Dependent access control

• Content-dependent access control – based on the data

• Context-dependent access control – based on the actions

• Some techniques
• Cell suppression – hiding specific cells that contain information
• Partitioning – dividing database into different parts and controlling access
• Noise and Perturbation - inserting bogus information to mislead the attacker
• Polyinstantiation – two instances of same object have different attributes
Online Transaction Processing
• It is used when databases are clustered to provide fault tolerance
and higher performance

• It provides mechanisms that watch for problems and deal with

them appropriately when they occur

• The main goal is to ensure that transactions either happen or don’t

happen at all

• It can load-balance incoming requests if necessary.

OLTP - ACID Test
• It provides integrity via ACID

• Atomicity:
• Either all changes are done or the database is rolled back

• Consistency:
• All data is consistent in the different databases

• Isolation:
• Transaction execute in isolation until completed, without interacting with other transaction

• Durability:
• Once the transaction is verified as accurate, it is committed and the database cannot be
rolled back
Data Warehouse
• Data warehousing combines data from multiple databases into a
large database

• The data warehouse is developed to carry out analysis

• It provides a base data that is then processed and presented in a

more useful and meaningful way
Data Mining
• Process of massaging the data held in the data warehouse into more
useful information

• They are used to find an association and correlation in data to produce

metadata

• Metadata can reveal abnormal patterns not previously apparent

• Metadata is the result of storing data with a data warehouse and in the
data with tools

• Goal is to extract information to gain knowledge about activities and

trends that were not visible earlier
Data Mining - KDD
• It is also known as Knowledge discovery in database

• It is a combination of techniques to identify valid and useful

patterns

• Three approaches used in KDD are

• Classification: Groups together data according to shared similarities
• Probabilistic: Identifies data interdependencies and applies probabilities to
their relationships
• Statistical: Identifies relationships between data elements and uses rule
discovery
Malicious Software
Type Description

Virus Application or code that infects software; Main function is to replicate and deliver its payload; It
requires a host application to replicate

Macro virus Written in one of the macro languages and it is platform independent
Its more common

Boot sector virus Infects the boot sector and either move data within boot sector or overwrite the sector with new
information

Stealth virus It hides the modifications it makes

Polymorphic virus It produces varied but operational copies of itself, it can use different encryption schemes
requiring different routines
Has the capability to change its own code
Mutipart virus Has several components to it and can be distributed to different parts of the system

Meme virus Its actually not a virus, but types of email messages that are continuously forwarded by users

Script virus The virus will carry out the instructions that is integrated into the script

Tunneling virus Attempts to install itself under the antimalware program and remain stealth
Malicious Software
Type Description

Worm They can reproduce on their own and are self-contained programs

Rootkit A bundle of tools that allow an attacker backdoor entry to the victim system; root kids commonly
include log scrubbers – which remove traces of the attacker’s activities from the system logs.
Root kit detection may be difficult because the rootkit may be able to subvert the AV solutions.
The best way is to reinstall the OS
Spyware Malware that is covertly installed to gather sensitive information about a victim

Adware Software that automatically generates advertisements

Botnets Group of bots (compromised hosts) under the control of a Command and Control server to
perform activities planned by the attacker
Logic Bomb It executes a program when a certain set of condition is met

Trojan Horse It is a program that is disguised as another program. They perform useful functionality in addition
to the malicious functionality in the background. It is one of the fastest growing malware types
Antimalware software
Type Description

Signature based Effective for detecting known malware; it cannot address new variants

Heuristic detection Analysis the overall structure of the malicious code, evaluates the coded instructions and logic
functions and then decides on the malicious action. It helps detect unknown malware

Immunizer An immunizer attaches code to the file, which would fool a virus into thinking it is already infected
Karthikeyan Dhayalan
MD & Chief Security Partner

www.cyintegriti.com