Modeling Cyber Situational Awareness through Data Fusion

Cyber attacks are compromising networks faster than administrators can respond. Network defenders are unable to become oriented with these attacks, determine the potential impacts, and assess the damages in a timely manner. Since the observations of network sensors are normally disjointed, analysis of the data is overwhelming and time is not spent efficiently. Automation in defending cyber networks requires a level of reasoning for adequate response. Current automated systems are mostly limited to scripted responses. Better defense tools are required. This research develops a framework that aggregates data from heterogeneous network sensors. The collected data is correlated into a single model that is easily interpreted by decision-making entities. This research proposes and tests an impact rating system that estimates the feasibility of an attack and its potential level of impact against the targeted network host as well the other hosts that reside on the network. The impact assessments would allow decision makers to prioritize attacks in real-time and attempt to mitigate the attacks in order of their estimated impact to the network. The ultimate goal of this system is to provide computer network defense tools the situational awareness required to make the right decisions to mitigate cyber attacks in real-time

A hybrid agent-based classification mechanism to detect denial of service attacks

This paper presents the core component of a solution based on agent technology specifically adapted for the classification of SOAP messages. The messages can carry out attacks that target the applications providing Web Services. One of the most common attacks requiring novel solutions is the denial of service attack (DoS), caused for the modifications introduced in the XML of the SOAP messages. The specifications of existing security standards do not focus on this type of attack. This article presents an advanced mechanism of classification designed in two phases incorporated within a CBR-BDI Agent type. This mechanism classifies the incoming SOAP message and blocks the malicious SOAP messages. Its main feature involves the use of decision trees, fuzzy logic rules and neural networks for filtering attacks. These techniques provide a mechanism of classification with the self-adaption ability to the changes that occur in the patterns of attack. A prototype was developed and the results obtained are presented in this study.This paper presents the core component of a solution based on agent technology specifically adapted for the classification of SOAP messages. The messages can carry out attacks that target the applications providing Web Services. One of the most common attacks requiring novel solutions is the denial of service attack (DoS), caused for the modifications introduced in the XML of the SOAP messages. The specifications of existing security standards do not focus on this type of attack. This article presents an advanced mechanism of classification designed in two phases incorporated within a CBR-BDI Agent type. This mechanism classifies the incoming SOAP message and blocks the malicious SOAP messages. Its main feature involves the use of decision trees, fuzzy logic rules and neural networks for filtering attacks. These techniques provide a mechanism of classification with the self-adaption ability to the changes that occur in the patterns of attack. A prototype was developed and the results obtained are presented in this study

Defending Against Denial of Service

Civil Society currently faces significant cyber threats. At the top of the list of those threats are Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. The websites of many organizations and individuals have already come under such attacks, and the frequency of those attacks are on the rise. Civil Society frequently does not have the kinds of resources or technical know-how that is available to commercial enterprise and government websites, and often have to exist in adverse political environments where every avenue available, both legal and illegal, is used against them. Therefore, the threat of DoS attacks is unlikely to go away any time soon.A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is any attack that overwhelms a website, causing the content normally provided by that website to no longer be available to regular visitors of the website. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are traffic volumebased attacks originating from a large number of computers, which are usually compromised workstations. These workstations, known as 'zombies', form a widely distributed attack network called a 'botnet'. While many modern Denial of Service attacks are Distributed Denial of Service attacks, this is certainly not true for all denials of service experienced by websites. Therefore, when users first start experiencing difficulty in getting to the website content, it should not be assumed that the site is under a DDoS attack. Many forms of DoS are far easier to implement than DDoS, and so these attacks are still used by parties with malicious intent. Many such DoS attacks are easier to defend against once the mechanism used to cause the denial of service is known. Therefore, it is paramount to do proper analysis of attack traffic when a site becomes unable to perform its normal function. There are two parts to this guide. The first part outlines preparatory steps that can be taken by Civil Society organizations to improve their website's resilience, should it come under attack. However, we do understand that most Civil Society organizations' first introduction to DoS attacks comes when they suddenly find themselves the victim of an attack. The second part of this guide provides a step-by-step process to assist the staff of NGOs to efficiently deal with that stressful situation

Stealthy Deception Attacks Against SCADA Systems

SCADA protocols for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are vulnerable to network attacks such as session hijacking. Hence, research focuses on network anomaly detection based on meta--data (message sizes, timing, command sequence), or on the state values of the physical process. In this work we present a class of semantic network-based attacks against SCADA systems that are undetectable by the above mentioned anomaly detection. After hijacking the communication channels between the Human Machine Interface (HMI) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), our attacks cause the HMI to present a fake view of the industrial process, deceiving the human operator into taking manual actions. Our most advanced attack also manipulates the messages generated by the operator's actions, reversing their semantic meaning while causing the HMI to present a view that is consistent with the attempted human actions. The attacks are totaly stealthy because the message sizes and timing, the command sequences, and the data values of the ICS's state all remain legitimate. We implemented and tested several attack scenarios in the test lab of our local electric company, against a real HMI and real PLCs, separated by a commercial-grade firewall. We developed a real-time security assessment tool, that can simultaneously manipulate the communication to multiple PLCs and cause the HMI to display a coherent system--wide fake view. Our tool is configured with message-manipulating rules written in an ICS Attack Markup Language (IAML) we designed, which may be of independent interest. Our semantic attacks all successfully fooled the operator and brought the system to states of blackout and possible equipment damage

VTAC: Virtual terrain assisted impact assessment for cyber attacks

Recently, there has been substantial research in the area of network security. Correlation of intrusion detection sensor alerts, vulnerability analysis, and threat projection are all being studied in hopes to relieve the workload that analysts have in monitoring their networks. Having an automated algorithm that can estimate the impact of cyber attacks on a network is another facet network analysts could use in defending their networks and gaining better overall situational awareness. Impact assessment involves determining the effect of a cyber attack on a network. Impact algorithms may consider items such as machine importance, connectivity, user accounts, known attacker capability, and similar machine configurations. Due to the increasing number of attacks, constantly changing vulnerabilities, and unknown attacker behavior, automating impact assessment is a non-trivial task. This work develops a virtual terrain that contains network and machine characteristics relevant to impact assessment. Once populated, this virtual terrain is used to perform impact assessment algorithms. The goal of this work is to investigate and propose an impact assessment system to assist network analysts in prioritizing attacks and analyzing overall network status. VTAC is tested with several scenarios over a network with a variety of configurations. Insights into the results of the scenarios, including how the network topologies and network asset configurations affect the impact analysis are discussed

Towards understanding and mitigating attacks leveraging zero-day exploits

Zero-day vulnerabilities are unknown and therefore not addressed with the result that they can be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorised system access. In order to understand and mitigate against attacks leveraging zero-days or unknown techniques, it is necessary to study the vulnerabilities, exploits and attacks that make use of them. In recent years there have been a number of leaks publishing such attacks using various methods to exploit vulnerabilities. This research seeks to understand what types of vulnerabilities exist, why and how these are exploited, and how to defend against such attacks by either mitigating the vulnerabilities or the method / process of exploiting them. By moving beyond merely remedying the vulnerabilities to defences that are able to prevent or detect the actions taken by attackers, the security of the information system will be better positioned to deal with future unknown threats. An interesting finding is how attackers exploit moving beyond the observable bounds to circumvent security defences, for example, compromising syslog servers, or going down to lower system rings to gain access. However, defenders can counter this by employing defences that are external to the system preventing attackers from disabling them or removing collected evidence after gaining system access. Attackers are able to defeat air-gaps via the leakage of electromagnetic radiation as well as misdirect attribution by planting false artefacts for forensic analysis and attacking from third party information systems. They analyse the methods of other attackers to learn new techniques. An example of this is the Umbrage project whereby malware is analysed to decide whether it should be implemented as a proof of concept. Another important finding is that attackers respect defence mechanisms such as: remote syslog (e.g. firewall), core dump files, database auditing, and Tripwire (e.g. SlyHeretic). These defences all have the potential to result in the attacker being discovered. Attackers must either negate the defence mechanism or find unprotected targets. Defenders can use technologies such as encryption to defend against interception and man-in-the-middle attacks. They can also employ honeytokens and honeypots to alarm misdirect, slow down and learn from attackers. By employing various tactics defenders are able to increase their chance of detecting and time to react to attacks, even those exploiting hitherto unknown vulnerabilities. To summarize the information presented in this thesis and to show the practical importance thereof, an examination is presented of the NSA's network intrusion of the SWIFT organisation. It shows that the firewalls were exploited with remote code execution zerodays. This attack has a striking parallel in the approach used in the recent VPNFilter malware. If nothing else, the leaks provide information to other actors on how to attack and what to avoid. However, by studying state actors, we can gain insight into what other actors with fewer resources can do in the future

Selected Computing Research Papers Volume 1 June 2012

An Evaluation of Anti-phishing Solutions (Arinze Bona Umeaku) ..................................... 1 A Detailed Analysis of Current Biometric Research Aimed at Improving Online Authentication Systems (Daniel Brown) .............................................................................. 7 An Evaluation of Current Intrusion Detection Systems Research (Gavin Alexander Burns) .................................................................................................... 13 An Analysis of Current Research on Quantum Key Distribution (Mark Lorraine) ............ 19 A Critical Review of Current Distributed Denial of Service Prevention Methodologies (Paul Mains) ............................................................................................... 29 An Evaluation of Current Computing Methodologies Aimed at Improving the Prevention of SQL Injection Attacks in Web Based Applications (Niall Marsh) .............. 39 An Evaluation of Proposals to Detect Cheating in Multiplayer Online Games (Bradley Peacock) ............................................................................................................... 45 An Empirical Study of Security Techniques Used In Online Banking (Rajinder D G Singh) .......................................................................................................... 51 A Critical Study on Proposed Firewall Implementation Methods in Modern Networks (Loghin Tivig) .................................................................................................... 5

Cyber indicators of compromise: a domain ontology for security information and event management

It has been said that cyber attackers are attacking at wire speed (very fast), while cyber defenders are defending at human speed (very slow). Researchers have been working to improve this asymmetry by automating a greater portion of what has traditionally been very labor-intensive work. This work is involved in both the monitoring of live system events (to detect attacks), and the review of historical system events (to investigate attacks). One technology that is helping to automate this work is Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). In short, SIEM technology works by aggregating log information, and then sifting through this information looking for event correlations that are highly indicative of attack activity. For example: Administrator successful local logon and (concurrently) Administrator successful remote logon. Such correlations are sometimes referred to as indicators of compromise (IOCs). Though IOCs for network-based data (i.e., packet headers and payload) are fairly mature (e.g., Snort's large rule-base), the field of end-device IOCs is still evolving and lacks any well-defined go-to standard accepted by all. This report addresses ontological issues pertaining to end-device IOCs development, including what they are, how they are defined, and what dominant early standards already exist.http://archive.org/details/cyberindicatorso1094553041Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Protecting browsers from dns rebinding attacks

DNS rebinding attacks subvert the same-origin policy of browsers, converting them into open network proxies. Using DNS rebinding, an attacker can circumvent organizational and personal firewalls, send spam email, and defraud pay-per-click advertisers. We evaluate the cost effectiveness of mounting DNS rebinding attacks, finding that an attacker requires less than $100 to hijack 100,000 IP addresses. We analyze defenses to DNS rebinding attacks, including improvements to the classic “DNS pinning, ” and recommend changes to browser plug-ins, firewalls, and Web servers. Our defenses have been adopted by plug-in vendors and by a number of open-source firewall implementations