Information Integrity

Abstract

The understanding and promotion of integrity in information security has traditionally been underemphasized or even ignored. From implantable medical devices and electronic voting to vehicle control, the critical importance of information integrity to our well-being has compelled review of its treatment in the literature. Through formal information flow models, the data modification view, and the relationship to data quality, information integrity will be surveyed. Illustrations are given for databases and information trustworthiness. Integrity protection is advancing but lacks standardization in terminology and application. Integrity must be better understood, and pursued, to achieve devices and systems that are beneficial and safe for the future.

An Empirical Study of the Usage of Checksums for Web Downloads

“…Our work relates to integrity verification techniques (see [9] for the different definitions of integrity, here we mean data integrity) , especially hash functions and signatures, and to the security of web (sub-)resources, including downloads.…”

“…We further extracted information about the downloaded files, essentially their sizes and their types. To determine the types of the downloaded files, we used the UNIX file command, 9 that relies on, among other information, the magic bytes of the file. 10 We further refined the file types by using the extensions of the files.…”

“…In particular, we used (English) keywords related to specific file extensions and hash function and signature scheme names. Also, our initial (training) dataset was biased towards open-source software (CCS '18 [3]) and towards websites visited by researchers in 9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_(command). 10 computer science (i.e., the lab members), as the researchers are obviously not representative of the general internet population.…”

“…Data integrity, which means that data is not altered, is a paramount property in information security [9]. And checksums-fixed-size strings generated from cryptographic hash function (e.g., SHA256) or signature schemes (e.g., PGP) and typically represented in hexadecimal or base64-are commonly used to verify integrity.…”

Blockchain-Based E-Voting Systems: A Technology Review

“…• Integrity: holistic assurance of security aligned with the design [45]. • Immutability: once a vote is recorded, it cannot be altered, ensuring the voting process's finality [46].…”