Privacy Preserving Database Application Testing

政府机构和私人组织正在积累大量关于公民的敏感信息。这些组织经常开发新的应用程序来利用存储在数据库中的信息。开发这样一个新应用程序的一个重要阶段是在部署之前对其进行彻底的测试。传统上，应用程序开发人员在其本地开发数据库上进行测试。这种方法的一个主要缺点是，这些本地数据库通常只有少量的数据样本，因此不能令人满意地模拟现场环境。另一方面，针对实时生产数据库测试应用程序的实践变得越来越不受欢迎，这是由于这样使用实时生产数据库可能向未经授权的测试者公开敏感数据并不正确地更新底层数据库的事实。本项目研究了在不泄露生产数据库上任何机密信息的情况下生成模拟数据库以进行应用软件测试的技术。加密技术，如不可否认性将被用来模拟隐私保护以及一个活的和一个模拟数据库之间的相似程度。该项目的成功将为安全应用软件测试开辟一个新的方法，并为未来的部署产生一个原型系统。

Government agencies and private organizations are accumulatinga vast amount of sensitive information on citizens. These organizations often develop new applications to utilize the information stored in the databases. An essential phase of developing such a new application is to test it thoroughly prior to deployment.Traditionally, application developers carry out tests on their local development databases. A major shortcoming of this approach is that these local databases usually have only a small number of data samples and hence cannot simulate satisfactorily a live environment. On the other hand, the practice of testing applications against live production databases is becoming increasingly undesirable due to the fact that such use of live production databases may disclose sensitive data to an unauthorized tester and incorrectly update the underlying databases. This project investigates techniques to generate mock databases for application software testing without revealing any confidential information on the live production databases. Cryptographic techniques such as indistinguishability will be used to model privacy preservation as well as the degree of similarity between a live and a mock database. Success of the project will open up a new approach to secure application software testing and produce a prototype system for future deployment.