Methods to secure databases against vulnerabilities

Abstract

Many commercial and government organizations utilize some form of proprietary or open source database management system. Recent history shows security incidents involving database management system vulnerabilities resulting in the compromise of personal information for millions of people. This thesis identifies common vulnerabilities affecting database management systems: injection, misconfigured databases, HTTP interfaces, encryption, and authentication and authorization. This thesis also examines three open source database management systems: MySQL, MongoDB, and Cassandra. We test each against the aforementioned vulnerabilities and provide recommendations to mitigate the vulnerabilities.