Intrusion detection system alert correlation with operating system level logs

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2009Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 63-66)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishvii, 67 leavesInternet is a global public network. More and more people are getting connected to the Internet every day to take advantage of the Internetwork connectivity. It also brings in a lot of risk on the Internet because there are both harmless and harmful users on the Internet. While an organization makes its information system available to harmless Internet users, at the same time the information is available to the malicious users as well. Most organizations deploy firewalls to protect their private network from the public network. But, no network can be hundred percent secured. This is because; the connectivity requires some kind of access to be granted on the internal systems to Internet users. The firewall provides security by allowing only specific services through it. The firewall implements defined rules to each packet reaching to its network interface. The IDS complements the firewall security by detected if someone tries to break in through the firewall or manages to break in the firewall security and tried to have access on any system in the trusted site and alerted the system administrator in case there is a breach in security. However, at present, IDSs suffer from several limitations. To address these limitations and learn network security threats, it is necessary to perform alert correlation. Alert correlation focuses on discovering various relationships between individual alerts. Intrusion alert correlation techniques correlate alerts into meaningful groups or attack scenarios for ease to understand by human analysts. In order to be sure about the alert correlation working properly, this thesis proposed to use attack scenarios by correlating alerts on the basis of prerequisites and consequences of intrusions. The architecture of the experimental environment based on the prerequisites and consequences of different types of attacks, the proposed approach correlates alerts by matching the consequence of some previous alerts and the prerequisite of some later ones with OS-level logs. As a result, the accuracy of the proposed method and its advantage demonstrated to focus on building IDS alert correlation with OS-level logs in information security systems

Analysis of intrusion prevention methods

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2004Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 105-108)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishviii, 108 leavesToday, the pace of the technological development and improvements has compelled the development of new and more complex applications. The obligatory of application development in a short time to rapidly changing requirements causes skipping of some stages, mostly the testing stage, in the software development cycle thus, leads to the production of applications with defects. These defects are, later, discovered by intruders to be used to penetrate into computer systems. Current security technologies, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, honeypots, network-based antivirus systems, are insufficient to protect systems against those, continuously increasing and rapid-spreading attacks. Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) is a new technology developed to block today.s application-specific, data-driven attacks that spread in the speed of communication. IPS is the evolved and integrated state of the existing technologies; it is not a new approach to network security. In this thesis, IPS products of various computer security appliance developer companies have been analyzed in details. At the end of these analyses, the requirements of network-based IPSs have been identified and an architecture that fits those requirements has been proposed. Also, a sample network-based IPS has been developed by modifying the open source application Snort

Study on Intrusion Detection System for a Campus Network

All final year students in UTP are required to undertake a final year project (FYP) paper, which are a design and/or research-based subject. It requires student to do research; design and/or development work in each discipline, especially on realworld problems which would motivate student to produce practical solutions. This project title is "Study on Intrusion Detection System for a Campus Network". It is a research and development work project. The objective of the project is to make sure student do a research in the area that relevant with specified title. Beside, student also needs to make a test bed application that is used in implementing the IDS. This project scope will focus on implementing the IDS in campus network and how to simulate the attacks besides measure it effectiveness in detecting any intrusion

Study on Intrusion Detection System for a Campus Network

All final year students in UTP are required to undertake a final year project (FYP) paper, which are a design and/or research-based subject. It requires student to do research; design and/or development work in each discipline, especially on realworld problems which would motivate student to produce practical solutions. This project title is "Study on Intrusion Detection System for a Campus Network". It is a research and development work project. The objective of the project is to make sure student do a research in the area that relevant with specified title. Beside, student also needs to make a test bed application that is used in implementing the IDS. This project scope will focus on implementing the IDS in campus network and how to simulate the attacks besides measure it effectiveness in detecting any intrusion

Hardware Acceleration of Network Intrusion Detection System Using FPGA

This thesis presents new algorithms and hardware designs for Signature-based Network Intrusion Detection System (SB-NIDS) optimisation exploiting a hybrid hardwaresoftware co-designed embedded processing platform. The work describe concentrates on optimisation of a complete SB-NIDS Snort application software on a FPGA based hardware-software target rather than on the implementation of a single functional unit for hardware acceleration. Pattern Matching Hardware Accelerator (PMHA) based on Bloom filter was designed to optimise SB-NIDS performance for execution on a Xilinx MicroBlaze soft-core processor. The Bloom filter approach enables the potentially large number of network intrusion attack patterns to be efficiently represented and searched primarily using accesses to FPGA on-chip memory. The thesis demonstrates, the viability of hybrid hardware-software co-designed approach for SB-NIDS. Future work is required to investigate the effects of later generation FPGA technology and multi-core processors in order to clearly prove the benefits over conventional processor platforms for SB-NIDS. The strengths and weaknesses of the hardware accelerators and algorithms are analysed, and experimental results are examined to determine the effectiveness of the implementation. Experimental results confirm that the PMHA is capable of performing network packet analysis for gigabit rate network traffic. Experimental test results indicate that our SB-NIDS prototype implementation on relatively low clock rate embedded processing platform performance is approximately 1.7 times better than Snort executing on a general purpose processor on PC when comparing processor cycles rather than wall clock time

Electronic security - risk mitigation in financial transactions : public policy issues

This paper builds on a previous series of papers (see Claessens, Glaessner, and Klingebiel, 2001, 2002) that identified electronic security as a key component to the delivery of electronic finance benefits. This paper and its technical annexes (available separately at http://www1.worldbank.org/finance/) identify and discuss seven key pillars necessary to fostering a secure electronic environment. Hence, it is intended for those formulating broad policies in the area of electronic security and those working with financial services providers (for example, executives and management). The detailed annexes of this paper are especially relevant for chief information and security officers responsible for establishing layered security. First, this paper provides definitions of electronic finance and electronic security and explains why these issues deserve attention. Next, it presents a picture of the burgeoning global electronic security industry. Then it develops a risk-management framework for understanding the risks and tradeoffs inherent in the electronic security infrastructure. It also provides examples of tradeoffs that may arise with respect to technological innovation, privacy, quality of service, and security in designing an electronic security policy framework. Finally, it outlines issues in seven interrelated areas that often need attention in building an adequate electronic security infrastructure. These are: 1) The legal framework and enforcement. 2) Electronic security of payment systems. 3) Supervision and prevention challenges. 4) The role of private insurance as an essential monitoring mechanism. 5) Certification, standards, and the role of the public and private sectors. 6) Improving the accuracy of information on electronic security incidents and creating better arrangements for sharing this information. 7) Improving overall education on these issues as a key to enhancing prevention.Knowledge Economy,Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Education for the Knowledge Economy,Knowledge Economy,Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Governance Indicators

Determining the effectiveness of deceptive honeynets

Over the last few years, incidents of network based intrusions have rapidly increased, due to the increase and popularity of various attack tools easily available for download from the Internet. Due to this increase in intrusions, the concept of a network defence known as Honeypots developed. These honeypots are designed to ensnare attackers and monitor their activities. Honeypots use the principles of deception such as masking, mimicry, decoying, inventing, repackaging and dazzling to deceive attackers. Deception exists in various forms. It is a tactic to survive and defeat the motives of attackers. Due to its presence in the nature, deception has been widely used during wars and now in Information Systems. This thesis considers the current state of honeypot technology as well as describes the framework of how to improve the effectiveness of honeypots through the effective use of deception. In this research, a legitimate corporate deceptive network is created using Honeyd (a type of honeypot) which is attacked and improved using empirical learning approach. The data collected during the attacking exercise were analysed, using various measures, to determine the effectiveness of the deception in the honeypot network created using honeyd. The results indicate that the attackers were deceived into believing the honeynet was a real network which instead was a deceptive network

The effectiveness of evasion techniques against intrusion prevention systems

Evaasioita ja evaasiokombinaatiota käytetään naamioimaan hyökkäyksiä, jotta tietoturvalaitteet eivät havaitsisi niitä. Diplomityössä tutkitaan näiden tekniikoiden tehokkuutta uusimpia tunkeutumisenestojärjestelmiä vastaan. Yhteensä 11 tunkeutumisenestojärjestelmää tutkittiin, joista 10 on kaupallista ja yksi ilmainen. Tutkimuksessa suoritettiin neljä koetta. Jokainen koe sisälsi miljoona hyökkäystä, jotka suoritettiin jokaista tunkeutumisenestojärjestelmää vastaan satunnaisin evaasioin ja evaasiokombinaatioin. Käytetty hyökkäys pysyi samana yksittäisen kokeen aikana, mutta jokainen hyökkäys oli naamioitu eri evaasiotekniikoin. Yhtenäistettyjä konfiguraatioita käytettiin, jotta saataisiin vertailukelpoisia tuloksia. Tulokset osoittavat, että evaasiotekniikat ovat toimivia suurinta osaa testattuja tunkeutumisenestojärjestelmiä vastaan. Vaikka osa evaasiotekniikoista on peräisin 1990-luvulta, ne voidaan saada hienosäädettyä huijaamaan suurinta osaa testatuista laitteista. Yksi evaasiotekniikka ei ole aina riittävä, jotta voitaisiin välttää hyökkäyksen havainnointi. Monen eri tekniikan yhdistäminen lisää kuitenkin todennäköisyyttä löytää tapa kiertää havainnointi.Evasions and evasion combinations are used to masquerade attacks in order to avoid detection by security appliances. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of these techniques against the state of the art intrusion prevention systems. In total, 11 intrusion prevention systems were studied, 10 commercial and 1 free solution. Four experiments were conducted in this study. Each of the experiments contained a million attacks that were performed with randomized evasions and evasion combinations against each intrusion prevention system. The used attack stayed the same during a single experiment, but each attack was disguised with different evasion techniques. Standardized configurations were used in order to produce comparable results. The results indicate that evasion techniques are effective against the majority of tested intrusion prevention systems. Even though some of the techniques are from the 1990s, they can be fine-tuned to fool most of the tested appliances. One evasion technique is not always enough to avoid detection, but combining multiple techniques increases the possibility to find a way to evade detection

The InfoSec Handbook

Computer scienc

Towards A Verified Complex Protocol Stack in a Production Kernel: Methodology and Demonstration

Any useful computer system performs communication and any communication must be parsed before it is computed upon. Given their importance, one might expect parsers to receive a significant share of attention from the security community. This is, however, not the case: bugs in parsers continue to account for a surprising portion of reported and exploited vulnerabilities. In this thesis, I propose a methodology for supporting the development of software that depends on parsers---such as anything connected to the Internet---to safely support any reasonably designed protocol: data structures to describe protocol messages; validation routines that check that data received from the wire conforms to the rules of the protocol; systems that allow a defender to inject arbitrary, crafted input so as to explore the effectiveness of the parser; and systems that allow for the observation of the parser code while it is being explored. Then, I describe principled method of producing parsers that automatically generates the myriad parser-related software from a description of the protocol. This has many significant benefits: it makes implementing parsers simpler, easier, and faster; it reduces the trusted computing base to the description of the protocol and the program that compiles the description to runnable code; and it allows for easier formal verification of the generated code. I demonstrate the merits of the proposed methodology by creating a description of the USB protocol using a domain-specific language (DSL) embedded in Haskell and integrating it with the FreeBSD operating system. Using the industry-standard umap test-suite, I measure the performance and efficacy of the generated parser. I show that it is stable, that it is effective at protecting a system from both accidentally and maliciously malformed input, and that it does not incur unreasonable overhead