Bibliographical review on cyber attacks from a control oriented perspective

This paper presents a bibliographical review of definitions, classifications and applications concerning cyber attacks in networked control systems (NCSs) and cyber-physical systems (CPSs). This review tackles the topic from a control-oriented perspective, which is complementary to information or communication ones. After motivating the importance of developing new methods for attack detection and secure control, this review presents security objectives, attack modeling, and a characterization of considered attacks and threats presenting the detection mechanisms and remedial actions. In order to show the properties of each attack, as well as to provide some deeper insight into possible defense mechanisms, examples available in the literature are discussed. Finally, open research issues and paths are presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Intellectual Feature Ranking Model with Correlated Feature Set based Malware Detection in Cloud environment using Machine Learning

Malware detection for cloud systems has been studied extensively, and many different approaches have been developed and implemented in an effort to stay ahead of this ever-evolving threat. Malware refers to any programme or defect that is designed to duplicate itself or cause damage to the system's hardware or software. These attacks are designed specifically to cause harm to operational systems, but they are invisible to the human eye. One of the most exciting developments in data storage and service delivery today is cloud computing. There are significant benefits to be gained over more conventional protection methods by making use of this fast evolving technology to protect computer-based systems from cyber-related threats. Assets to be secured may reside in any networked computing environment, including but not limited to Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), critical systems, fixed and portable computers, mobile devices, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Malicious software or malware refers to any programme that intentionally compromises a computer system in order to compromise its security, privacy, or availability. A cloud-based intelligent behavior analysis model for malware detection system using feature set is proposed to identify the ever-increasing malware attacks. The suggested system begins by collecting malware samples from several virtual machines, from which unique characteristics can be extracted easily. Then, the malicious and safe samples are separated using the features provided to the learning-based and rule-based detection agents. To generate a relevant feature set for accurate malware detection, this research proposes an Intellectual Feature Ranking Model with Correlated Feature Set (IFR-CFS) model using enhanced logistic regression model for accurate detection of malware in the cloud environment. The proposed model when compared to the traditional feature selection model, performs better in generation of feature set for accurate detection of malware

Deteção de propagação de ameaças e exfiltração de dados em redes empresariais

Modern corporations face nowadays multiple threats within their networks. In an era where companies are tightly dependent on information, these threats can seriously compromise the safety and integrity of sensitive data. Unauthorized access and illicit programs comprise a way of penetrating the corporate networks, able to traversing and propagating to other terminals across the private network, in search of confidential data and business secrets. The efficiency of traditional security defenses are being questioned with the number of data breaches occurred nowadays, being essential the development of new active monitoring systems with artificial intelligence capable to achieve almost perfect detection in very short time frames. However, network monitoring and storage of network activity records are restricted and limited by legal laws and privacy strategies, like encryption, aiming to protect the confidentiality of private parties. This dissertation proposes methodologies to infer behavior patterns and disclose anomalies from network traffic analysis, detecting slight variations compared with the normal profile. Bounded by network OSI layers 1 to 4, raw data are modeled in features, representing network observations, and posteriorly, processed by machine learning algorithms to classify network activity. Assuming the inevitability of a network terminal to be compromised, this work comprises two scenarios: a self-spreading force that propagates over internal network and a data exfiltration charge which dispatch confidential info to the public network. Although features and modeling processes have been tested for these two cases, it is a generic operation that can be used in more complex scenarios as well as in different domains. The last chapter describes the proof of concept scenario and how data was generated, along with some evaluation metrics to perceive the model’s performance. The tests manifested promising results, ranging from 96% to 99% for the propagation case and 86% to 97% regarding data exfiltration.Nos dias de hoje, várias organizações enfrentam múltiplas ameaças no interior da sua rede. Numa época onde as empresas dependem cada vez mais da informação, estas ameaças podem compremeter seriamente a segurança e a integridade de dados confidenciais. O acesso não autorizado e o uso de programas ilícitos constituem uma forma de penetrar e ultrapassar as barreiras organizacionais, sendo capazes de propagarem-se para outros terminais presentes no interior da rede privada com o intuito de atingir dados confidenciais e segredos comerciais. A eficiência da segurança oferecida pelos sistemas de defesa tradicionais está a ser posta em causa devido ao elevado número de ataques de divulgação de dados sofridos pelas empresas. Desta forma, o desenvolvimento de novos sistemas de monitorização ativos usando inteligência artificial é crucial na medida de atingir uma deteção mais precisa em curtos períodos de tempo. No entanto, a monitorização e o armazenamento dos registos da atividade da rede são restritos e limitados por questões legais e estratégias de privacidade, como a cifra dos dados, visando proteger a confidencialidade das entidades. Esta dissertação propõe metodologias para inferir padrões de comportamento e revelar anomalias através da análise de tráfego que passa na rede, detetando pequenas variações em comparação com o perfil normal de atividade. Delimitado pelas camadas de rede OSI 1 a 4, os dados em bruto são modelados em features, representando observações de rede e, posteriormente, processados por algoritmos de machine learning para classificar a atividade de rede. Assumindo a inevitabilidade de um terminal ser comprometido, este trabalho compreende dois cenários: um ataque que se auto-propaga sobre a rede interna e uma tentativa de exfiltração de dados que envia informações para a rede pública. Embora os processos de criação de features e de modelação tenham sido testados para estes dois casos, é uma operação genérica que pode ser utilizada em cenários mais complexos, bem como em domínios diferentes. O último capítulo inclui uma prova de conceito e descreve o método de criação dos dados, com a utilização de algumas métricas de avaliação de forma a espelhar a performance do modelo. Os testes mostraram resultados promissores, variando entre 96% e 99% para o caso da propagação e entre 86% e 97% relativamente ao roubo de dados.Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemátic

Security of Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-physical system (CPS) innovations, in conjunction with their sibling computational and technological advancements, have positively impacted our society, leading to the establishment of new horizons of service excellence in a variety of applicational fields. With the rapid increase in the application of CPSs in safety-critical infrastructures, their safety and security are the top priorities of next-generation designs. The extent of potential consequences of CPS insecurity is large enough to ensure that CPS security is one of the core elements of the CPS research agenda. Faults, failures, and cyber-physical attacks lead to variations in the dynamics of CPSs and cause the instability and malfunction of normal operations. This reprint discusses the existing vulnerabilities and focuses on detection, prevention, and compensation techniques to improve the security of safety-critical systems

Intelligent systems for efficiency and security

As computing becomes ubiquitous and personalized, resources like energy, storage and time are becoming increasingly scarce and, at the same time, computing systems must deliver in multiple dimensions, such as high performance, quality of service, reliability, security and low power. Building such computers is hard, particularly when the operating environment is becoming more dynamic, and systems are becoming heterogeneous and distributed. Unfortunately, computers today manage resources with many ad hoc heuristics that are suboptimal, unsafe, and cannot be composed across the computer’s subsystems. Continuing this approach has severe consequences: underperforming systems, resource waste, information loss, and even life endangerment. This dissertation research develops computing systems which, through intelligent adaptation, deliver efficiency along multiple dimensions. The key idea is to manage computers with principled methods from formal control. It is with these methods that the multiple subsystems of a computer sense their environment and configure themselves to meet system-wide goals. To achieve the goal of intelligent systems, this dissertation makes a series of contributions, each building on the previous. First, it introduces the use of formal MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) control for processors, to simultaneously optimize many goals like performance, power, and temperature. Second, it develops the Yukta control system, which uses coordinated formal controllers in different layers of the stack (hardware and operating system). Third, it uses robust control to develop a fast, globally coordinated and decentralized control framework called Tangram, for heterogeneous computers. Finally, it presents Maya, a defense against power side-channel attacks that uses formal control to reshape the power dissipated by a computer, confusing the attacker. The ideas in the dissertation have been demonstrated successfully with several prototypes, including one built along with AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) engineers. These designs significantly outperformed the state of the art. The research in this dissertation brought formal control closer to computer architecture and has been well-received in both domains. It has the first application of full-fledged MIMO control for processors, the first use of robust control in computer systems, and the first application of formal control for side-channel defense. It makes a significant stride towards intelligent systems that are efficient, secure and reliable

Achieving cyber resiliency against lateral movement through detection and response

Systems and attacks are becoming more complex, and classical cyber security methods are failing to protect and secure those systems. We believe that systems must be built to be resilient to attacks. Cyber resilience is a dynamic protection strategy that aims to stop cyber attacks while maintaining an acceptable level of service. The strategy monitors a system to detect cyber incidents, and dynamically changes the state of the system to learn about the incidents, contain an attack, and recover. Thus, instead of being perfectly protected, a cyber-resilient system survives a cyber incident by containing the attack and recovering while maintaining service. Cyber resiliency has the potential to secure the modern systems that control our critical infrastructure. However, several practical and theoretical challenges hinder the development of cyber-resilient architectures. In particular, an architecture needs to support and make use of a large amount of monitoring; the problem is especially serious for a large network in which hosts send low-level information for fusion. The problem is not only computational; the semantics of the data also creates a challenge. In combining information from multiple sources and across multiple abstractions, we need to realize that the sources are describing different events in the system which are occurring at varying time scales. Moreover, the system is dependent on the integrity of the monitoring data when estimating the state of the system. The estimated state is used to detect malicious activities and to drive responses. The integrity of the monitoring data is critical to making “correct” decisions that are not influenced by the attacker. In addition, choosing an appropriate response to specific attacks requires knowledge of the at- tackers’ behavior, i.e., an attacker model. If the attacker model is wrong, then the responses selected by the mechanism will be ineffective. Finally, the response mechanisms need to be proven effective in maintaining the resilience of the system. Proving such properties is particularly challenging when the systems are highly complex. In this dissertation, we propose a resiliency architecture that uses a model of the system to deploy monitors, estimates the state of the system using monitor data, and selects responses to contain and recover from attacks while maintaining service. Then we describe our design for the essential components of the said resiliency architecture for a multitude of systems including operating systems, hosts, and enterprise net- works, to address lateral movement attacks. Specifically, we have built components that address monitor design, fusion of monitoring data, and response. Our pieces address the challenges that face cyber-resilient architectures. We set out to provide resilience against lateral movement. Lateral movement is a step taken by an attacker to shift his or her position from an initial compromised host into a target host with high value. First, we designed a host-level monitor Kobra that generates different estimations of the state of a host. Kobra combines the various aspects of application behavior into multiple views: (1) a discrete time signal used for anomaly detection, and (2) a host-level process communication graph to correlate events that happen in a network. We use the host correlations to generate chains of network events that correspond to suspicious lateral movement behavior. We use a novel fusion framework that enables us to fuse monitoring events for different sources over a hierarchy. Finally, we respond to lateral movement by changing the topology and healing rates in the network. The changes are enacted by a feedback controller to slow down and stop the spread of the attack. Since our cyber resiliency architecture depends on the integrity of the monitoring data, we propose PowerAlert, an out-of-box integrity checker, to establish the “trustworthiness” of a machine. PowerAlert is resilient to attacker evasion and adaptation. It uses the current drawn by the CPU, measured using an external probe, to confirm that the machine executed the check as expected. To prevent an attacker from evading PowerAlert, we use an optimal initiation strategy, and to resist adaptation, we use randomly generated integrity-checking programs. We pick the optimal initiation strategy by modeling the problem of low-cost integrity checking when an attacker is attempting to evade detection as a continuous-time game called Tireless. The optimal strategy is the Nash equilibrium that optimizes the defender’s cost of checking and utility of detection against an adaptive attacker

Trustworthiness in Mobile Cyber Physical Systems

Computing and communication capabilities are increasingly embedded in diverse objects and structures in the physical environment. They will link the ‘cyberworld’ of computing and communications with the physical world. These applications are called cyber physical systems (CPS). Obviously, the increased involvement of real-world entities leads to a greater demand for trustworthy systems. Hence, we use "system trustworthiness" here, which can guarantee continuous service in the presence of internal errors or external attacks. Mobile CPS (MCPS) is a prominent subcategory of CPS in which the physical component has no permanent location. Mobile Internet devices already provide ubiquitous platforms for building novel MCPS applications. The objective of this Special Issue is to contribute to research in modern/future trustworthy MCPS, including design, modeling, simulation, dependability, and so on. It is imperative to address the issues which are critical to their mobility, report significant advances in the underlying science, and discuss the challenges of development and implementation in various applications of MCPS

Cyber Security of Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures are vital assets for public safety, economic welfare, and the national security of countries. The vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures have increased with the widespread use of information technologies. As Critical National Infrastructures are becoming more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, their protection becomes a significant issue for organizations as well as nations. The risks to continued operations, from failing to upgrade aging infrastructure or not meeting mandated regulatory regimes, are considered highly significant, given the demonstrable impact of such circumstances. Due to the rapid increase of sophisticated cyber threats targeting critical infrastructures with significant destructive effects, the cybersecurity of critical infrastructures has become an agenda item for academics, practitioners, and policy makers. A holistic view which covers technical, policy, human, and behavioural aspects is essential to handle cyber security of critical infrastructures effectively. Moreover, the ability to attribute crimes to criminals is a vital element of avoiding impunity in cyberspace. In this book, both research and practical aspects of cyber security considerations in critical infrastructures are presented. Aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of cyber security, authors from academia, government, and industry have contributed 13 chapters. The issues that are discussed and analysed include cybersecurity training, maturity assessment frameworks, malware analysis techniques, ransomware attacks, security solutions for industrial control systems, and privacy preservation methods

Cyber Law and Espionage Law as Communicating Vessels

Professor Lubin\u27s contribution is Cyber Law and Espionage Law as Communicating Vessels, pp. 203-225. Existing legal literature would have us assume that espionage operations and “below-the-threshold” cyber operations are doctrinally distinct. Whereas one is subject to the scant, amorphous, and under-developed legal framework of espionage law, the other is subject to an emerging, ever-evolving body of legal rules, known cumulatively as cyber law. This dichotomy, however, is erroneous and misleading. In practice, espionage and cyber law function as communicating vessels, and so are better conceived as two elements of a complex system, Information Warfare (IW). This paper therefore first draws attention to the similarities between the practices – the fact that the actors, technologies, and targets are interchangeable, as are the knee-jerk legal reactions of the international community. In light of the convergence between peacetime Low-Intensity Cyber Operations (LICOs) and peacetime Espionage Operations (EOs) the two should be subjected to a single regulatory framework, one which recognizes the role intelligence plays in our public world order and which adopts a contextual and consequential method of inquiry. The paper proceeds in the following order: Part 2 provides a descriptive account of the unique symbiotic relationship between espionage and cyber law, and further explains the reasons for this dynamic. Part 3 places the discussion surrounding this relationship within the broader discourse on IW, making the claim that the convergence between EOs and LICOs, as described in Part 2, could further be explained by an even larger convergence across all the various elements of the informational environment. Parts 2 and 3 then serve as the backdrop for Part 4, which details the attempt of the drafters of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 to compartmentalize espionage law and cyber law, and the deficits of their approach. The paper concludes by proposing an alternative holistic understanding of espionage law, grounded in general principles of law, which is more practically transferable to the cyber realmhttps://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facbooks/1220/thumbnail.jp