Re: Passwords and authentication

[Arup Nanda]

Title: Passwords and authentication

Mladen,   Thanks for bringing it up. In my book I will cover the VPD (vitual private database) in detail and will explain how to use the application user model into making a secure authentication and authorization model. Label security is nothing but a specialized tool based on the more general VPD. Most security conscious organizations will probably like VPD more as it provides more flexibility in defining who sees what? OLS is narrower in focus, a carry over from the old CIA project where each record in a table was treated like a file with a security level and persons were assigned cklearance levels. The check was whether user's clearance is greater than or equal to the record's (or the docuemnts) clearance. The authorization requirements were simple.   Most real life system will most likely have different and more complex requirements, though. Instead of plain simple levels, your records will have to be verified against a lot of parameters. For instance, in your database (Oxford Health), you may have a senior business analyst (John Napoli) with authorization to see claims that are (i) from a list of providers he is approved to see, (ii) below $10000, (iii) for procedure codes that are not protected by HIPAA's protected health information and perhaps a lot more. This is not as simple as assigning a level to a row, but a rather complicated set of where conditions applied at the runtime. VPD addresses that issue. Along with application context, you will have the toolbox to build a complete iron-clad authentication and authorization system.   Hope this helps.   Arup Nanda www.proligence.com       ----- Original Message ----- From: Gogala, Mladen To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 12:45 PM Subject: RE: Passwords and authentication There is also label security option which is present on Enterprise Edition CD. That would alleviate the need for manual encryption because the table cannot be seen unless there is sufficient security clearance. Also, logging in from SQL*Plus can be disabled from the USER_PRODUCT_PROFILE. Connected to that, is anybody on this list using label security? Does anybody have experience with it? Arup, you are writing a book about security in Oracle 9.2  and I hope that you will cover label security.   Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Phone:(203) 459-6855 Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Arup Nanda [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 12:15 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: Re: Passwords and authentication Raj,   My first question will be how you would want to pass the encrypted password. sqlplus <username>/<encyptedpass>? But won't the encrypted password be known before making the connection? If so, then the user who will encrypt the password will also know how to decrypt them. What's the advantage in doing that?   Are you concerned someone sniffing the network uncovers a clear password? If so, have you considered network security with password encryption by Oracle Net?   If that is not the concern but rather you don't want the users to know the real password, here is a solution you might be interested. It's part of a elaborate application security design. Please read on if you are interested.   You would have user called SECUSER with only table APP_USERS. The table has two columns - APP_USER and APP_PASS, in encrypted manner, with Triple DES Encryption. The user also has one function - check_app_password, which accepts two parameters - the userid and the password and returns a string. The return value is YES is the password supplied is correct and NO, if it isn't. It does not shw the correct password, ever; just shows if the supplied password is correct or not. This function is defined as DEFINER rights. All users get an execute privilege on this function, nothing else on the rest of the objects of the SECUSER user.   Inside the function, the password is retrieved from the table, decrypted with the key inside the procedure and matched with the supplied one. Another function is provided to encrypt the password using teh same key. For more ecurity, the userid and password combination can encrypted, not just the password. If you want I can give you the code for the functions.   When the app user connects, the connection is done through a generic id, that, after the conenction, validates the password using the function and authenticates the user. If the password is not correct, the user is booted out.   Now comes other issues - fine grained access control and fine grained auditing. These features need to have a sepcific named database user. However, that can be easily fixed by setting up an application context and passing the app_user value to a context attribute. This attribute can now be tracked, rather than the userid.   Hope this helps.   Arup Nanda www.proligence.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Jamadagni, Rajendra To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 9:19 AM Subject: Passwords and authentication Is it possible to connect to database using encrypted passwords? Using sqlplus? Thanks Raj -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rajendra dot Jamadagni at nospamespn dot com All Views expressed in this email are strictly personal. QOTD: Any clod can have facts, having an opinion is an art !