The Design and Implementation of a Self-Healing Database System

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of ITDB, a self-healing or intrusion-tolerant database prototype system. While traditional secure database systems rely on preventive controls and are very limited in surviving malicious attacks, ITDB can detect intrusions, isolate attacks, contain, assess, and repair the damage caused by intrusions in a timely manner such that sustained, self-stabilized levels of data integrity and availability can be provided to applications in the face of attacks. ITDB is implemented on top of a COTS DBMS. We have evaluated the cost-effectiveness of ITDB using several micro-benchmarks. Preliminary testing measurements suggest that when the accuracy of intrusion detection is satisfactory, ITDB can effectively locate and repair the damage on-the-fly with reasonable (database) performance penalty. Keywords: Security, Survivability, Self-Healing Database Systems