60 research outputs found
Three Decades of Deception Techniques in Active Cyber Defense -- Retrospect and Outlook
Deception techniques have been widely seen as a game changer in cyber
defense. In this paper, we review representative techniques in honeypots,
honeytokens, and moving target defense, spanning from the late 1980s to the
year 2021. Techniques from these three domains complement with each other and
may be leveraged to build a holistic deception based defense. However, to the
best of our knowledge, there has not been a work that provides a systematic
retrospect of these three domains all together and investigates their
integrated usage for orchestrated deceptions. Our paper aims to fill this gap.
By utilizing a tailored cyber kill chain model which can reflect the current
threat landscape and a four-layer deception stack, a two-dimensional taxonomy
is developed, based on which the deception techniques are classified. The
taxonomy literally answers which phases of a cyber attack campaign the
techniques can disrupt and which layers of the deception stack they belong to.
Cyber defenders may use the taxonomy as a reference to design an organized and
comprehensive deception plan, or to prioritize deception efforts for a budget
conscious solution. We also discuss two important points for achieving active
and resilient cyber defense, namely deception in depth and deception lifecycle,
where several notable proposals are illustrated. Finally, some outlooks on
future research directions are presented, including dynamic integration of
different deception techniques, quantified deception effects and deception
operation cost, hardware-supported deception techniques, as well as techniques
developed based on better understanding of the human element.Comment: 19 page
An SDN-Based Fingerprint Hopping Method to Prevent Fingerprinting Attacks
Fingerprinting attacks are one of the most severe threats to the security of networks. Fingerprinting attack aims to obtain the operating system information of target hosts to make preparations for future attacks. In this paper, a fingerprint hopping method (FPH) is proposed based on software-defined networks to defend against fingerprinting attacks. FPH introduces the idea of moving target defense to show a hopping fingerprint toward the fingerprinting attackers. The interaction of the fingerprinting attack and its defense is modeled as a signal game, and the equilibriums of the game are analyzed to develop an optimal defense strategy. Experiments show that FPH can resist fingerprinting attacks effectively
The Good, the Bad, and the Actively Verified
We believe that we can use active probing for compromise recovery. Our intent is to exploit the differences in behavior between compromised and uncompromised systems and use that information to identify those which are not behaving as expected. Those differences may indicate a deviation in either con figuration or implementation from what we expect on the network, either of which suggests that the misbehaving entity might not be trustworthy. In this work, we propose and build a case for a method for using altered behavior directly resulting from or introduced as a side-effect of the compromise of a network service to detect the presence of such a compromise. We use several case studies to illustrate our technique, and demonstrate its feasibility with a software tool developed using our method
Modeling Deception for Cyber Security
In the era of software-intensive, smart and connected systems, the growing power and so-
phistication of cyber attacks poses increasing challenges to software security. The reactive
posture of traditional security mechanisms, such as anti-virus and intrusion detection
systems, has not been sufficient to combat a wide range of advanced persistent threats
that currently jeopardize systems operation. To mitigate these extant threats, more ac-
tive defensive approaches are necessary. Such approaches rely on the concept of actively
hindering and deceiving attackers. Deceptive techniques allow for additional defense by
thwarting attackers’ advances through the manipulation of their perceptions. Manipu-
lation is achieved through the use of deceitful responses, feints, misdirection, and other
falsehoods in a system. Of course, such deception mechanisms may result in side-effects
that must be handled. Current methods for planning deception chiefly portray attempts
to bridge military deception to cyber deception, providing only high-level instructions
that largely ignore deception as part of the software security development life cycle. Con-
sequently, little practical guidance is provided on how to engineering deception-based
techniques for defense. This PhD thesis contributes with a systematic approach to specify
and design cyber deception requirements, tactics, and strategies. This deception approach
consists of (i) a multi-paradigm modeling for representing deception requirements, tac-
tics, and strategies, (ii) a reference architecture to support the integration of deception
strategies into system operation, and (iii) a method to guide engineers in deception mod-
eling. A tool prototype, a case study, and an experimental evaluation show encouraging
results for the application of the approach in practice. Finally, a conceptual coverage map-
ping was developed to assess the expressivity of the deception modeling language created.Na era digital o crescente poder e sofisticação dos ataques cibernéticos apresenta constan-
tes desafios para a segurança do software. A postura reativa dos mecanismos tradicionais
de segurança, como os sistemas antivírus e de detecção de intrusão, não têm sido suficien-
tes para combater a ampla gama de ameaças que comprometem a operação dos sistemas
de software actuais. Para mitigar estas ameaças são necessárias abordagens ativas de
defesa. Tais abordagens baseiam-se na ideia de adicionar mecanismos para enganar os
adversários (do inglês deception). As técnicas de enganação (em português, "ato ou efeito
de enganar, de induzir em erro; artimanha usada para iludir") contribuem para a defesa
frustrando o avanço dos atacantes por manipulação das suas perceções. A manipula-
ção é conseguida através de respostas enganadoras, de "fintas", ou indicações erróneas
e outras falsidades adicionadas intencionalmente num sistema. É claro que esses meca-
nismos de enganação podem resultar em efeitos colaterais que devem ser tratados. Os
métodos atuais usados para enganar um atacante inspiram-se fundamentalmente nas
técnicas da área militar, fornecendo apenas instruções de alto nível que ignoram, em
grande parte, a enganação como parte do ciclo de vida do desenvolvimento de software
seguro. Consequentemente, há poucas referências práticas em como gerar técnicas de
defesa baseadas em enganação. Esta tese de doutoramento contribui com uma aborda-
gem sistemática para especificar e desenhar requisitos, táticas e estratégias de enganação
cibernéticas. Esta abordagem é composta por (i) uma modelação multi-paradigma para re-
presentar requisitos, táticas e estratégias de enganação, (ii) uma arquitetura de referência
para apoiar a integração de estratégias de enganação na operação dum sistema, e (iii) um
método para orientar os engenheiros na modelação de enganação. Uma ferramenta protó-
tipo, um estudo de caso e uma avaliação experimental mostram resultados encorajadores
para a aplicação da abordagem na prática. Finalmente, a expressividade da linguagem
de modelação de enganação é avaliada por um mapeamento de cobertura de conceitos
Privacy in the Smart City - Applications, Technologies, Challenges and Solutions
Many modern cities strive to integrate information technology into every aspect of city life to create so-called smart cities. Smart cities rely on a large number of application areas and technologies to realize complex interactions between citizens, third parties, and city departments. This overwhelming complexity is one reason why holistic privacy protection only rarely enters the picture. A lack of privacy can result in discrimination and social sorting, creating a fundamentally unequal society. To prevent this, we believe that a better understanding of smart cities and their privacy implications is needed. We therefore systematize the application areas, enabling technologies, privacy types, attackers and data sources for the attacks, giving structure to the fuzzy term “smart city”. Based on our taxonomies, we describe existing privacy-enhancing technologies, review the state of the art in real cities around the world, and discuss promising future research directions. Our survey can serve as a reference guide, contributing to the development of privacy-friendly smart cities
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