Prevention of Privilege Abuse on NoSQL Databases : Analysis on MongoDB access control

Sammanfattning: Database security is vital to retain confidentiality and integrity of data as well as prevent security threats such as privilege abuse. The most common form of privilege abuse is excessive privilege abuse, which entails assigning users with excessive privileges beyond their job function, which can be abused deliberately or inadvertently. The thesis’s objective is to determine how to prevent privilege abuse in the NoSQL database MongoDB. Prior studies have noted the importance of access control to secure databases from privilege abuse. Access control is essential to manage and protect the accessibility of the data stored and restrict unauthorised access. Therefore, the study analyses MongoDB’s embedded access control through experimental testing to test various built-in and advanced privileges roles in preventing privilege abuse. The results indicate that privilege abuse can be prevented if users are granted roles composed of the least privileges. Additionally, the results indicate that assigning users with excessive privileges exposes the system to privilege abuse. The study also underlines that an inaccurate allocation of privileges or permissions to users of databases may have profound consequences for the system and organisation, such as data breach and data manipulation. Hence, organisations that utilise information technology should be obliged to protect their interests and databases from others and their members through access control policies.