Engineering topics

Shue, Craig A

Publications and source records attributed to Shue, Craig A.

6 records

DOE OSTI2011

Using the Domain Name System to Thwart Automated Client-Based Attacks

On the Internet, attackers can compromise systems owned by other people and then use these systems to launch attacks automatically. When attacks such as phishing or SQL injections are successful, they can have negative consequences including server downtime and the loss of sensitive information. Current methods to prevent such attacks are limited in that they are application-specific, or fail to block attackers. Phishing attempts can be stopped with email filters, but if the attacker manages to successfully bypass these filters, then the user must determine if the email is legitimate or not. Unfortunately, they often are unable to do so. Since attackers have a low success rate, they attempt to compensate for it in volume. In order to have this high throughput, attackers take shortcuts and break protocols. We use this knowledge to address these issues by implementing a system that can detect malicious activity and use it to block attacks. If the client fails to follow proper procedure, they can be classified as an attacker. Once an attacker has been discovered, they will be isolated and monitored. This can be accomplished using existing software in Ubuntu Linux applications, along with our custom wrapper application. After running the system and seeing its performance on three popular Web browsers Chromium, Firefox and Internet Explorer as well as two popular email clients, Thunderbird and Evolution, we found that not only is this system conceivable, it is effective and has low overhead.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Touring DNS Open Houses for Trends and Configurations

DNS is a critical component of the Internet. It maps domain names to IP addresses and serves as a distributed database for various other applications, including mail, Web, and spam filtering. This paper examines DNS zones in the Internet for diversity, adoption rates of new technologies, and prevalence of configuration issues. To gather data, we sweep 60% of the Internet's domains in June - August 2007 for zone transfers. 6.6% of them allow us to transfer their complete information. Surprisingly, this includes a large fraction of the domains deploying DNSSEC. We find that DNS zones vary significantly in size and some span many ASes. Also, while anti-spam technologies appear to be getting deployed, the adoption rates of DNSSEC and IPv6 continue to be low. Finally, we also find that carelessness in handing DNS records can lead to reduced availability of name servers, email, and Web servers. This also undermines anti-spam efforts and the efforts to shut down phishing sites or to contain malware infections.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Embracing the Cloud for Better Cyber Security

The future of cyber security is inextricably tied to the future of computing. Organizational needs and economic factors will drive computing outcomes. Cyber security researchers and practitioners must recognize the path of computing evolution and position themselves to influence the process to incorporate security as an inherent property. The best way to predict future computing trends is to look at recent developments and their motivations. Organizations are moving towards outsourcing their data storage, computation, and even user desktop environments. This trend toward cloud computing has a direct impact on cyber security: rather than securing user machines, preventing malware access, and managing removable media, a cloud-based security scheme must focus on enabling secure communication with remote systems. This change in approach will have profound implications for cyber security research efforts. In this work, we highlight existing and emerging technologies and the limitations of cloud computing systems. We then discuss the cyber security efforts that would support these applications. Finally, we discuss the implications of these computing architecture changes, in particular with respect to malware and social engineering.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Abnormally Malicious Autonomous Systems and their Internet Connectivity

While many attacks are distributed across botnets, investigators and network operators have recently targeted malicious networks through high profile autonomous system (AS) de-peerings and network shut-downs. In this paper, we explore whether some ASes indeed are safe havens for malicious activity. We look for ISPs and ASes that exhibit disproportionately high malicious behavior using ten popular blacklists, plus local spam data, and extensive DNS resolutions based on the contents of the blacklists. We find that some ASes have over 80% of their routable IP address space blacklisted. Yet others account for large fractions of blacklisted IP addresses. Several ASes regularly peer with ASes associated with significant malicious activity. We also find that malicious ASes as a whole differ from benign ones in other properties not obviously related to their malicious activities, such as more frequent connectivity changes with their BGP peers. Overall, we conclude that examining malicious activity at AS granularity can unearth networks with lax security or those that harbor cybercrime.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

On Building Inexpensive Network Capabilities

There are many deployed approaches for blocking unwanted traffic, either once it reaches the recipient's network, or closer to its point of origin. One of these schemes is based on the notion of traffic carrying capabilities that grant access to a network and/or end host. However, leveraging capabilities results in added complexity and additional steps in the communication process: Before communication starts a remote host must be vetted and given a capability to use in the subsequent communication. In this paper, we propose a lightweight mechanism that turns the answers provided by DNS name resolution---which Internet communication broadly depends on anyway---into capabilities. While not achieving an ideal capability system, we show the mechanism can be built from commodity technology and is therefore a pragmatic way to gain some of the key benefits of capabilities without requiring new infrastructure.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Automatic Construction of Anomaly Detectors from Graphical Models

Detection of rare or previously unseen attacks in cyber security presents a central challenge: how does one search for a sufficiently wide variety of types of anomalies and yet allow the process to scale to increasingly complex data? In particular, creating each anomaly detector manually and training each one separately presents untenable strains on both human and computer resources. In this paper we propose a systematic method for constructing a potentially very large number of complementary anomaly detectors from a single probabilistic model of the data. Only one model needs to be trained, but numerous detectors can then be implemented. This approach promises to scale better than manual methods to the complex heterogeneity of real-life data. As an example, we develop a Latent Dirichlet Allocation probability model of TCP connections entering Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We show that several detectors can be automatically constructed from the model and will provide anomaly detection at flow, sub-flow, and host (both server and client) levels. This demonstrates how the fundamental connection between anomaly detection and probabilistic modeling can be exploited to develop more robust operational solutions.

anomaly detection↗