12,683 research outputs found

    The Effect of Security Education and Expertise on Security Assessments: the Case of Software Vulnerabilities

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    In spite of the growing importance of software security and the industry demand for more cyber security expertise in the workforce, the effect of security education and experience on the ability to assess complex software security problems has only been recently investigated. As proxy for the full range of software security skills, we considered the problem of assessing the severity of software vulnerabilities by means of a structured analysis methodology widely used in industry (i.e. the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (\CVSS) v3), and designed a study to compare how accurately individuals with background in information technology but different professional experience and education in cyber security are able to assess the severity of software vulnerabilities. Our results provide some structural insights into the complex relationship between education or experience of assessors and the quality of their assessments. In particular we find that individual characteristics matter more than professional experience or formal education; apparently it is the \emph{combination} of skills that one owns (including the actual knowledge of the system under study), rather than the specialization or the years of experience, to influence more the assessment quality. Similarly, we find that the overall advantage given by professional expertise significantly depends on the composition of the individual security skills as well as on the available information.Comment: Presented at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2018), Innsbruck, Austria, June 201

    ATTACK2VEC: Leveraging Temporal Word Embeddings to Understand the Evolution of Cyberattacks

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    Despite the fact that cyberattacks are constantly growing in complexity, the research community still lacks effective tools to easily monitor and understand them. In particular, there is a need for techniques that are able to not only track how prominently certain malicious actions, such as the exploitation of specific vulnerabilities, are exploited in the wild, but also (and more importantly) how these malicious actions factor in as attack steps in more complex cyberattacks. In this paper we present ATTACK2VEC, a system that uses temporal word embeddings to model how attack steps are exploited in the wild, and track how they evolve. We test ATTACK2VEC on a dataset of billions of security events collected from the customers of a commercial Intrusion Prevention System over a period of two years, and show that our approach is effective in monitoring the emergence of new attack strategies in the wild and in flagging which attack steps are often used together by attackers (e.g., vulnerabilities that are frequently exploited together). ATTACK2VEC provides a useful tool for researchers and practitioners to better understand cyberattacks and their evolution, and use this knowledge to improve situational awareness and develop proactive defenses

    Economic Factors of Vulnerability Trade and Exploitation

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    Cybercrime markets support the development and diffusion of new attack technologies, vulnerability exploits, and malware. Whereas the revenue streams of cyber attackers have been studied multiple times in the literature, no quantitative account currently exists on the economics of attack acquisition and deployment. Yet, this understanding is critical to characterize the production of (traded) exploits, the economy that drives it, and its effects on the overall attack scenario. In this paper we provide an empirical investigation of the economics of vulnerability exploitation, and the effects of market factors on likelihood of exploit. Our data is collected first-handedly from a prominent Russian cybercrime market where the trading of the most active attack tools reported by the security industry happens. Our findings reveal that exploits in the underground are priced similarly or above vulnerabilities in legitimate bug-hunting programs, and that the refresh cycle of exploits is slower than currently often assumed. On the other hand, cybercriminals are becoming faster at introducing selected vulnerabilities, and the market is in clear expansion both in terms of players, traded exploits, and exploit pricing. We then evaluate the effects of these market variables on likelihood of attack realization, and find strong evidence of the correlation between market activity and exploit deployment. We discuss implications on vulnerability metrics, economics, and exploit measurement.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, 14 table

    Attack2vec: Leveraging temporal word embeddings to understand the evolution of cyberattacks

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    Despite the fact that cyberattacks are constantly growing in complexity, the research community still lacks effective tools to easily monitor and understand them. In particular, there is a need for techniques that are able to not only track how prominently certain malicious actions, such as the exploitation of specific vulnerabilities, are exploited in the wild, but also (and more importantly) how these malicious actions factor in as attack steps in more complex cyberattacks. In this paper we present ATTACK2VEC, a system that uses temporal word embeddings to model how attack steps are exploited in the wild, and track how they evolve. We test ATTACK2VEC on a dataset of billions of security events collected from the customers of a commercial Intrusion Prevention System over a period of two years, and show that our approach is effective in monitoring the emergence of new attack strategies in the wild and in flagging which attack steps are often used together by attackers (e.g., vulnerabilities that are frequently exploited together). ATTACK2VEC provides a useful tool for researchers and practitioners to better understand cyberattacks and their evolution, and use this knowledge to improve situational awareness and develop proactive defenses.Accepted manuscrip
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