The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity

Data integrity is a fundamental aspect of computer security that has attracted much interest in recent decades. Despite a general consensus for the meaning of the problem, the lack of a formal definition has led to spurious claims such as "tamper proof", "prevent tampering", and...

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Main Author: Moss, Ben
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10538/
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author Moss, Ben
author_facet Moss, Ben
author_sort Moss, Ben
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Data integrity is a fundamental aspect of computer security that has attracted much interest in recent decades. Despite a general consensus for the meaning of the problem, the lack of a formal definition has led to spurious claims such as "tamper proof", "prevent tampering", and "tamper protection", which are all misleading in the absence of a formal definition. Ashman recently proposed a new approach for protecting the integrity of a document that claims the ability to detect, locate, and correct tampering. If determining integrity is only part of the problem, then a more general notion of data integrity is needed. Furthermore, in the presence of a persistent tamperer, the problem is more concerned with maintaining and proving the integrity of data, rather than determining it. This thesis introduces a formal model for the more general notion of data integrity by providing a formal problem semantics for its sub-problems: detection, location, correction, and prevention. The model is used to reason about the structure of the data integrity problem and to prove some fundamental results concerning the security and existence of schemes that attempt to solve these sub-problems. Ashman's original multi-layered document integrity (MLDI) paper [1] is critically evaluated, and several issues are highlighted. These issues are investigated in detail, and a series of algorithms are developed to present the MLDI schemes. Several factors that determine the feasibility of Ashman's approach are identified in order to prove certain theoretical results concerning the efficacy of MLDI schemes.
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spelling nottingham-105382025-02-28T11:08:41Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10538/ The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity Moss, Ben Data integrity is a fundamental aspect of computer security that has attracted much interest in recent decades. Despite a general consensus for the meaning of the problem, the lack of a formal definition has led to spurious claims such as "tamper proof", "prevent tampering", and "tamper protection", which are all misleading in the absence of a formal definition. Ashman recently proposed a new approach for protecting the integrity of a document that claims the ability to detect, locate, and correct tampering. If determining integrity is only part of the problem, then a more general notion of data integrity is needed. Furthermore, in the presence of a persistent tamperer, the problem is more concerned with maintaining and proving the integrity of data, rather than determining it. This thesis introduces a formal model for the more general notion of data integrity by providing a formal problem semantics for its sub-problems: detection, location, correction, and prevention. The model is used to reason about the structure of the data integrity problem and to prove some fundamental results concerning the security and existence of schemes that attempt to solve these sub-problems. Ashman's original multi-layered document integrity (MLDI) paper [1] is critically evaluated, and several issues are highlighted. These issues are investigated in detail, and a series of algorithms are developed to present the MLDI schemes. Several factors that determine the feasibility of Ashman's approach are identified in order to prove certain theoretical results concerning the efficacy of MLDI schemes. 2007 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10538/1/bxm-thesis-corrected.pdf Moss, Ben (2007) The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Data Integrity Tampering Multi-layered Document Integrity Tamper Prevention Tamper Correction Tamper Location Tamper Detection
spellingShingle Data Integrity
Tampering
Multi-layered Document Integrity
Tamper Prevention
Tamper Correction
Tamper Location
Tamper Detection
Moss, Ben
The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
title The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
title_full The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
title_fullStr The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
title_full_unstemmed The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
title_short The data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
title_sort data integrity problem and multi-layered document integrity
topic Data Integrity
Tampering
Multi-layered Document Integrity
Tamper Prevention
Tamper Correction
Tamper Location
Tamper Detection
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10538/