Declarative Foundations of Secure Deductive Databases

In this paper, we develop a formal logical foundation for secure deductive databases. This logical foundation is based on an extended logic involving several modal operators. We develop two models of interaction between the user and the database called “yes-no” dialogs, and “yesno-don't know” dialogs. Both dialog frameworks allow the database to lie to the user. We identify necessary and sufficient conditions for the database to be able to preserve security. Similar results are also obtained for yes-no-don't know dialogs.