Event Mutation Processing with Hash Chain Integrity Verification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Database systems face challenges in ensuring data integrity and authenticity, particularly in financial systems, where data can be incorrectly entered or altered maliciously, leading to tampering and loss of trust in the application state.
Innovation Solution
A system that uses a combination of hashing and encryption to verify the integrity of events by generating and rehashing event data with sequence numbers and signatures, ensuring that any alteration would require changes across the entire event chain, and employing a key management service for secure encryption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If data is stored in a database system without cryptographic verification, then data entry and modification are simple and fast, but data integrity and authenticity cannot be ensured against incorrect entry or malicious alteration
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary cryptographic hashing of event data before storage, creating a hash chain where each event's hash incorporates the previous event's hash. This preliminary action ensures that any future modification to stored events would break the hash chain, providing proactive integrity protection rather than reactive detection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces cryptographic hash functions and digital signatures as intermediary mechanisms between data storage and verification. These intermediaries transform raw event data into verified, tamper-proof records without requiring complex trust relationships between system components, simplifying the overall verification architecture.
2Reliability
If cryptographic verification is implemented for all events, then data authenticity is ensured, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies cryptographic verification selectively rather than uniformly to all events. Full cryptographic verification is applied only when needed for audit trails or dispute resolution, while routine operations can proceed with simpler validation. This partial application reduces overall processing overhead while maintaining security where critical.
Solution Approach 2:
Cryptographic hashes are computed and stored alongside events during the initial data entry phase, rather than being computed later during verification. This preliminary computation distributes the computational burden across time, avoiding concentrated processing delays during critical verification operations.
3Reliability
If event data is stored without hash chaining, then storage and retrieval are simple, but any single event can be altered without detection
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the event log into a chain of individually verifiable units, where each event is a discrete segment linked to its predecessor through cryptographic hashing. This segmentation allows localized verification of individual events without requiring validation of the entire log, reducing the complexity of tamper detection while maintaining comprehensive security.
Solution Approach 2:
Each event in the chain contains or references the hash of the previous event, creating a nested structure where verification of one event inherently verifies its predecessor. This nested arrangement embeds the verification mechanism within the data structure itself, eliminating the need for separate, complex verification systems.
4Productivity
If mutations are applied directly to stored events, then data updates are fast, but there is no audit trail to track changes or detect unauthorized modifications
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a preliminary copy or snapshot of event data before applying mutations, preserving the original state in the immutable hash chain. This preliminary preservation enables rapid forward progression with new events while maintaining a complete audit trail of all changes, as the original hashed state remains permanently recorded for comparison and verification.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for committing event data includes an interface and a hardware processor. The interface is configured to receive modified input data for desired events. The hardware processor is configured to retrieve the desired events from a desired aggregate; select requested event to modify from the desired aggregate; replace input data of the requested event with the modified input data to create a modified aggregate; replay events of the modified aggregate N to generate a new state of aggregate N; and provide the new state of aggregate N.