Chip-Secured Data Access: Confidential Data on Untrusted Servers

The democratization of ubiquitous computing (access data anywhere, anytime, anyhow), the increasing connection of corporate databases to the Internet and the today's natural resort to Web-hosting companies strongly emphasize the need for data confidentiality. Database servers arouse user's suspicion because no one can fully trust traditional security mechanisms against more and more frequent and malicious attacks and no one can be fully confident on an invisible DBA administering confidential data. This paper gives an in-depth analysis of existing security solutions and concludes on the intrinsic weakness of the traditional server-based approach to preserve data confidentiality. With this statement in mind, we propose a solution called C-SDA (Chip-Secured Data Access), which enforces data confidentiality and controls personal privileges thanks to a client-based security component acting as a mediator between a client and an encrypted database. This component is embedded in a smartcard to prevent any tampering to occur. This cooperation of hardware and software security components constitutes a strong guarantee against attacks threatening personal as well as business data.