BigFoot: Exploiting and Mitigating Leakage in Encrypted Write-Ahead Logs

2021/11/17 by Jialing Pei, Vitaly Shmatikov, Pei, Jialing +1 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Advanced Data Storage Technologies #Cloud Data Security Solutions #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Security and Verification in Computing

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.09374

openalex publication_date 2021/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Modern databases and data-warehousing systems separate query processing and durable storage. Storage systems have idiosyncratic bugs and security vulnerabilities, thus attacks that compromise only storage are a realistic threat. In this paper, we show that encryption alone is not sufficient to protect databases from compromised storage. Using MongoDB WiredTiger as a concrete example, we demonstrate that sizes of encrypted writes to a durable write-ahead log can reveal sensitive information about the inputs and activities of MongoDB applications. We then design, implement, and evaluate BigFoot, a WAL modification that mitigates size leakage.

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