Fingerprinting of Relational Databases for Stopping the Data Theft

The currently-emerging technology demands sharing of data using various channels via the Internet, disks, etc. Some recipients of this data can also become traitors by leaking the important data. As a result, the data breaches due to data leakage are also increasing. These breaches include unauthorized distribution, duplication, and sale. The identification of a guilty agent responsible for such breaches is important for: (i) punishing the culprit; and (ii) preventing the innocent user from accusation and punishment. Fingerprinting techniques provide a mechanism for classifying the guilty agent from multiple recipients and also help to prevent the innocent user from being accused of the data breach. To those ends, in this paper, a novel fingerprinting framework has been proposed using a biometric feature as a digital mark (signature). The use of machine learning has also been introduced to make this framework intelligent, particularly for preserving the data usability. An attack channel has also been used to evaluate the robustness of the proposed scheme. The experimental study was also conducted to demonstrate that the proposed technique is robust against several malicious attacks, such as subset selection attacks, mix and match attacks, collusion attacks, deletion attacks, insertion attacks, and alteration attacks.