VERIDB: An SGX-based Verifiable Database

The emergence of trusted hardwares (such as Intel SGX) provides a new avenue towards verifiable database. Such trust hardwares act as an additional trust anchor, allowing great simplification and, in turn, performance improvement in the design of verifiable databases. In this paper, we introduce the design and implementation of VERIDB, an SGX-based verifiable database that supports relational tables, multiple access methods and general SQL queries. Built on top of write-read consistent memory, VERIDB provides verifiable page-structured storage, where results of storage operations can be efficiently verified with low, constant overhead. VERIDB further provides verifiable query execution that supports general SQL queries. Through a series of evaluation using practical workload, we demonstrate that VERIDB incurs low overhead for achieving verifiability: an overhead of 1-2 microseconds for read/write operations, and a 9% - 39% overhead for representative analytical workloads.

Automated summary

This study introduces VERIDB, a verifiable database based on Intel SGX. By using trusted hardwares as an additional trust anchor, VERIDB achieves simplification and performance improvement in design, supporting relational tables, multiple access methods, general SQL queries, verifiable storage, and query execution. Through evaluations with practical workloads, low overheads were observed for achieving verifiability.