10,891 research outputs found
Vulnerability anti-patterns:a timeless way to capture poor software practices (Vulnerabilities)
There is a distinct communication gap between the software engineering and cybersecurity communities when it comes to addressing reoccurring security problems, known as vulnerabilities. Many vulnerabilities are caused by software errors that are created by software developers. Insecure software development practices are common due to a variety of factors, which include inefficiencies within existing knowledge transfer mechanisms based on vulnerability databases (VDBs), software developers perceiving security as an afterthought, and lack of consideration of security as part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The resulting communication gap also prevents developers and security experts from successfully sharing essential security knowledge. The cybersecurity community makes their expert knowledge available in forms including vulnerability databases such as CAPEC and CWE, and pattern catalogues such as Security Patterns, Attack Patterns, and Software Fault Patterns. However, these sources are not effective at providing software developers with an understanding of how malicious hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in the software systems they create. As developers are familiar with pattern-based approaches, this paper proposes the use of Vulnerability Anti-Patterns (VAP) to transfer usable vulnerability knowledge to developers, bridging the communication gap between security experts and software developers. The primary contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) it proposes a new pattern template – Vulnerability Anti-Pattern – that uses anti-patterns rather than patterns to capture and communicate knowledge of existing vulnerabilities, and (2) it proposes a catalogue of Vulnerability Anti-Patterns (VAP) based on the most commonly occurring vulnerabilities that software developers can use to learn how malicious hackers can exploit errors in software
Future prospects for personal security in travel by public transport
This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/I037032/1]. No other funding support from any other bodies was provided.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
OnionBots: Subverting Privacy Infrastructure for Cyber Attacks
Over the last decade botnets survived by adopting a sequence of increasingly
sophisticated strategies to evade detection and take overs, and to monetize
their infrastructure. At the same time, the success of privacy infrastructures
such as Tor opened the door to illegal activities, including botnets,
ransomware, and a marketplace for drugs and contraband. We contend that the
next waves of botnets will extensively subvert privacy infrastructure and
cryptographic mechanisms. In this work we propose to preemptively investigate
the design and mitigation of such botnets. We first, introduce OnionBots, what
we believe will be the next generation of resilient, stealthy botnets.
OnionBots use privacy infrastructures for cyber attacks by completely
decoupling their operation from the infected host IP address and by carrying
traffic that does not leak information about its source, destination, and
nature. Such bots live symbiotically within the privacy infrastructures to
evade detection, measurement, scale estimation, observation, and in general all
IP-based current mitigation techniques. Furthermore, we show that with an
adequate self-healing network maintenance scheme, that is simple to implement,
OnionBots achieve a low diameter and a low degree and are robust to
partitioning under node deletions. We developed a mitigation technique, called
SOAP, that neutralizes the nodes of the basic OnionBots. We also outline and
discuss a set of techniques that can enable subsequent waves of Super
OnionBots. In light of the potential of such botnets, we believe that the
research community should proactively develop detection and mitigation methods
to thwart OnionBots, potentially making adjustments to privacy infrastructure.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure
Cyber-crime Science = Crime Science + Information Security
Cyber-crime Science is an emerging area of study aiming to prevent cyber-crime by combining security protection techniques from Information Security with empirical research methods used in Crime Science. Information security research has developed techniques for protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information assets but is less strong on the empirical study of the effectiveness of these techniques. Crime Science studies the effect of crime prevention techniques empirically in the real world, and proposes improvements to these techniques based on this. Combining both approaches, Cyber-crime Science transfers and further develops Information Security techniques to prevent cyber-crime, and empirically studies the effectiveness of these techniques in the real world. In this paper we review the main contributions of Crime Science as of today, illustrate its application to a typical Information Security problem, namely phishing, explore the interdisciplinary structure of Cyber-crime Science, and present an agenda for research in Cyber-crime Science in the form of a set of suggested research questions
Active Cyber Defense Dynamics Exhibiting Rich Phenomena
The Internet is a man-made complex system under constant attacks (e.g.,
Advanced Persistent Threats and malwares). It is therefore important to
understand the phenomena that can be induced by the interaction between cyber
attacks and cyber defenses. In this paper, we explore the rich phenomena that
can be exhibited when the defender employs active defense to combat cyber
attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that shows that
{\em active cyber defense dynamics} (or more generally, {\em cybersecurity
dynamics}) can exhibit the bifurcation and chaos phenomena. This has profound
implications for cyber security measurement and prediction: (i) it is
infeasible (or even impossible) to accurately measure and predict cyber
security under certain circumstances; (ii) the defender must manipulate the
dynamics to avoid such {\em unmanageable situations} in real-life defense
operations.Comment: Proceedings of 2015 Symposium on the Science of Security (HotSoS'15
Overcoming Data Breaches and Human Factors in Minimizing Threats to Cyber-Security Ecosystems
This mixed-methods study focused on the internal human factors responsible for data breaches that could cause adverse impacts on organizations. Based on the Swiss cheese theory, the study was designed to examine preventative measures that managers could implement to minimize potential data breaches resulting from internal employees\u27 behaviors. The purpose of this study was to provide insight to managers about developing strategies that could prevent data breaches from cyber-threats by focusing on the specific internal human factors responsible for data breaches, the root causes, and the preventive measures that could minimize threats from internal employees. Data were collected from 10 managers and 12 employees from the business sector, and 5 government managers in Ivory Coast, Africa. The mixed methodology focused on the why and who using the phenomenological approach, consisting of a survey, face-to-face interviews using open-ended questions, and a questionnaire to extract the experiences and perceptions of the participants about preventing the adverse consequences from cyber-threats. The results indicated the importance of top managers to be committed to a coordinated, continuous effort throughout the organization to ensure cyber security awareness, training, and compliance of security policies and procedures, as well as implementing and upgrading software designed to detect and prevent data breaches both internally and externally. The findings of this study could contribute to social change by educating managers about preventing data breaches who in turn may implement information accessibility without retribution. Protecting confidential data is a major concern because one data breach could impact many people as well as jeopardize the viability of the entire organization
Towards a Networks-of-Networks Framework for Cyber Security
Networks-of-networks (NoN) is a graph-theoretic model of interdependent
networks that have distinct dynamics at each network (layer). By adding special
edges to represent relationships between nodes in different layers, NoN
provides a unified mechanism to study interdependent systems intertwined in a
complex relationship. While NoN based models have been proposed for
cyber-physical systems, in this position paper we build towards a three-layered
NoN model for an enterprise cyber system. Each layer captures a different facet
of a cyber system. We present in-depth discussion for four major graph-
theoretic applications to demonstrate how the three-layered NoN model can be
leveraged for continuous system monitoring and mission assurance.Comment: A shorter (3-page) version of this paper will appear in the
Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics 2013, Seattle
Washington, USA, June 4-7, 201
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