A stateful mechanism for the tree-rule firewall

© 2014 IEEE. In this paper, we propose a novel connection tracking mechanism for Tree-rule firewall which essentially organizes firewall rules in a designated Tree structure. A new firewall model based on the proposed connection tracking mechanism is then developed and extended from the basic model of Net filter's Conn Track module, which has been used by many early generation commercial and open source firewalls including IPTABLES, the most popular firewall. To reduce the consumption of memory space and processing time, our proposed model uses one node per connection instead of using two nodes as appeared in Net filter model. This can reduce memory space and processing time. In addition, we introduce an extended hash table with more hashing bits in our firewall model in order to accommodate more concurrent connections. Moreover, our model also applies sophisticated techniques (such as using static information nodes, and avoiding timer objects and memory management tasks) to improve its processing speed. Finally, we implement this model on Linux Cent OS 6.3 and evaluate its speed. The experimental results show that our model performs more efficiently in comparison with the Net filter/IPTABLES

An improvement of tree-rule firewall for a large network: Supporting large rule size and low delay

© 2016 IEEE. Firewalls are important network devices which provide first hand defense against network threat. This level of defense is depended on firewall rules. Traditional firewalls, i.e., Cisco ACL, IPTABLES, Check Point and Juniper NetScreen firewall use listed rule to regulate packet flows. However, the listed rules may lead to rule conflictions which make the firewall to be less secure or even slowdown in performance. Based on our previous research works, we proposed the Tree-Rule firewall which does not encounter such rule conflicts within its rule set and operates faster than the traditional firewalls. However, in big or complex networks, the Tree-Rule firewall still may face two main problems. 1. Firewall administrators may face difficulty to write big and complex rule. 2. Difficulty to select appropriate attribute column for the Root node. In this paper, we propose an improved model for the Tree-Rule firewall by extending our previous models. We offer the use of combination between IN and OUT interfaces of the firewall to separate a big rule to many small independent rules. Each separated rule then can be managed in an individual screen. Sequence of verifying attributes, i.e., Source IP, Destination IP and Destination Port numbers, can be ordered independently in each separated rule. We implement the two main schemes on Linux Cent OS 6.3. We found that the improved Tree-Rule firewall can be managed easily with low processing delay

Tree rule firewall

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Firewall is a network component for deciding packets whether they will be accepted or denied. The packet decision results are dependent on rule policy pre-defined by firewall administrators. In traditional firewalls, the rule policy will be arranged in a list of rule line called 'listed rule'. The listed rule can cause three significant problems consisting of speed, security, and user friendly problems. The speed problems can occur because many packets will be matched with the rule positioned in bottom positions. Firewall may waste time to verify packets with many rules positioned above the matched rule. Moreover, the traditional firewalls also face to rule conflicts, e.g., shadowed rules. Many rules written to prevent attacking packets may be shadowed by some rules above them and cannot block any packet so that dangerous packets originated from outside can reach internal networks. Additionally, the traditional firewalls are involved with the lack of user-friendly features because administrators must have enough experience in order to create enough efficiency rules. This research proposes a novel firewall by using a tree structure of rules to solve the above problems. In the proposed approach, firewall administrators are able to design rules in the tree format, and then a core processor of firewall will process packets according to this format. The tree structure can be seen in both users' view and firewall's view. Packets will be verified with the tree shape of rule called 'tree rule'. To decide packet, searching for a data in the tree rule can be done quickly in comparison to searching data in the listed rule of traditional firewalls. This is because searching data in the Tree is faster than sequential searching data in Arrays. Moreover, rule conflicts can be eradicated, since each packet will be verified with the corresponding 'rule path' in the tree rule. This can avoid rule conflicts and shadowed rules. Thus, security problems caused by shadowed rules cannot be found in the tree rule firewall. Moreover, administrators can create rules easier with the GUI (Graphical User Interface) rule editor. They can design tree rule by creating nodes and links. There are ranges of IP addresses or ports inside each node. The GUI can sort the data inside nodes automatically and maintain consistency of the rule. Thus, the tree rule can be designed easily. Therefore, the Tree-Rule firewall can provide faster functional speed, be more secure, and be easier to use compared to traditional Listed-Rule firewalls

A survey of intrusion detection techniques in Cloud

Cloud computing provides scalable, virtualized on-demand services to the end users with greater flexibility and lesser infrastructural investment. These services are provided over the Internet using known networking protocols, standards and formats under the supervision of different managements. Existing bugs and vulnerabilities in underlying technologies and legacy protocols tend to open doors for intrusion. This paper, surveys different intrusions affecting availability, confidentiality and integrity of Cloud resources and services. It examines proposals incorporating Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) in Cloud and discusses various types and techniques of IDS and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), and recommends IDS/IPS positioning in Cloud architecture to achieve desired security in the next generation networks

IaaS-cloud security enhancement: an intelligent attribute-based access control model and implementation

The cloud computing paradigm introduces an efficient utilisation of huge computing resources by multiple users with minimal expense and deployment effort compared to traditional computing facilities. Although cloud computing has incredible benefits, some governments and enterprises remain hesitant to transfer their computing technology to the cloud as a consequence of the associated security challenges. Security is, therefore, a significant factor in cloud computing adoption. Cloud services consist of three layers: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Cloud computing services are accessed through network connections and utilised by multi-users who can share the resources through virtualisation technology. Accordingly, an efficient access control system is crucial to prevent unauthorised access. This thesis mainly investigates the IaaS security enhancement from an access control point of view. [Continues.

Hybrid Tree-rule Firewall for High Speed Data Transmission

Traditional firewalls employ listed rules in both configuration and process phases to regulate network traffic. However, configuring a firewall with listed rules may create rule conflicts, and slows down the firewall. To overcome this problem, we have proposed a Tree-rule firewall in our previous study. Although the Tree-rule firewall guarantees no conflicts within its rule set and operates faster than traditional firewalls, keeping track of the state of network connections using hashing functions incurs extra computational overhead. In order to reduce this overhead, we propose a hybrid Tree-rule firewall in this paper. This hybrid scheme takes advantages of both Tree-rule firewalls and traditional listed-rule firewalls. The GUIs of our Tree-rule firewalls are utilized to provide a means for users to create conflict-free firewall rules, which are organized in a tree structure and called 'tree rules'. These tree rules are later converted into listed rules that share the merit of being conflict-free. Finally, in decision making, the listed rules are used to verify against packet header information. The rules which have matched with most packets are moved up to the top positions by the core firewall. The mechanism applied in this hybrid scheme can significantly improve the functional speed of a firewall

Enhancing Automated Network Management

Network management benefits from automated tools. With the recent advent of software-defined principles, automated tools have been proposed from both industry and academia to fulfill function components in the network management control loop. While automation aims to accommodate the ever increasing network diversity and dynamics with improved reliability and management efficiency, it also brings new concerns as it’s becoming more difficult to understand the control of the network and operators cannot rely on traditional troubleshooting tools. Meanwhile, how to effectively integrate new automation tools with existing legacy networks remains a question. This dissertationpresents efficient methods to address key functionalities within the control loop in the adaption of automated network management.Identifying the network-wide forwarding behaviors of a packet is essential for many network management tasks, including policy enforcement, rule verification, and fault localization. We start by presenting AP Classifier. AP Classifier was developed based on the concept of atomic predicates which can be used to characterize the forwarding behaviors of packets. There is an increasing trend that enterprises outsource their Network Function (NF) processing to a cloud to lower cost and ease management. To avoid threats to the enterprise’s private information, we propose SICS based on AP Classifier, a secure and dynamic NF outsourcing framework. Stateful NFs have become essential parts of modern networks, increasing the complexity in network management. A major step in network automation is to automatically translate high level network intents into low level configurations. To ensure those configurations and the states generated by automation match intents, we present Epinoia, a network intent checker for stateful networks. While the concept of auto-translation sounds promising, operators may not know what intents should be. To close the control loop, we present AutoInfer to automatically infer intents of running networks, which helps operators understand the network runtime states

Formal assurance of security policies in automated network orchestration (SDN/NFV)

1noL'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmentopen677. INGEGNERIA INFORMATInoopenYusupov, Jalolliddi

Automation for network security configuration: state of the art and research trends

The size and complexity of modern computer networks are progressively increasing, as a consequence of novel architectural paradigms such as the Internet of Things and network virtualization. Consequently, a manual orchestration and configuration of network security functions is no more feasible, in an environment where cyber attacks can dramatically exploit breaches related to any minimum configuration error. A new frontier is then the introduction of automation in network security configuration, i.e., automatically designing the architecture of security services and the configurations of network security functions, such as firewalls, VPN gateways, etc. This opportunity has been enabled by modern computer networks technologies, such as virtualization. In view of these considerations, the motivations for the introduction of automation in network security configuration are first introduced, alongside with the key automation enablers. Then, the current state of the art in this context is surveyed, focusing on both the achieved improvements and the current limitations. Finally, possible future trends in the field are illustrated