Attack Graphs for Proactive Digital Forensics

Tara L. McQueenDelaware State University

Louis P. WilderComputational Sciences and Engineering Division

August 2009

2 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Overview

• Purpose

• Cyber Security

• Hacking

• Proactive digital forensics

• Attack graphs

• Universal Serial Bus (USB) exploits

• Registry and event logs

• Future work

3 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Purpose

• Increase cyber security

• Identify possible cyber attacks as they occur

• Create attack graph of USB exploit

• Link event logs and registry data to attack graph

• Investigate theoretical proactive design

4 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Cyber security

• Maintaining confidentiality, availability and access of information

• Identifying legitimate– Users

– Requests

– Tasks

• Preserving information integrity

• Mending network vulnerabilities

• Hacking prevention/detection

5 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Cyber protection

• Growing need as fraudulent activity and electronic commerce increases

• Affecting industries dependent on – Networks

– Computer Systems

– Internet

6 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Hacking

• Gaining unauthorized– Access

– Control

– Data

• Using technical knowledge and exposed information

• Cleaning tracks

• Preventing is difficult and expensive

7 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Proactive digital forensics

• Anticipating hacker/exploit path

• Detecting hacker/exploit in process

• Collecting proper data immediately for judicial efforts

• Enhancing security

8 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Attack graphs

• Communicate information about threats

• Display combinations of vulnerabilities

• Shows– Vulnerabilities as vertices

– Hierarchical constraints as edges

9 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

USB attack

• Take milliseconds to initiate (drive by)

• Collect confidential documents

• Send worm through network

• Execute applications automatically

• Easy to develop, retrieve and unleash

• Occur unknowingly

10 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Registry and event logs

• Standard on Windows

• Monitors events– Application

– Security

– System

• Identifies operations and information

• Essential for attack graph

11 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Windows XP registry

12 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Windows XP event logs

13 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

USB exploit attack graph

14 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Theoretical proactive design

15 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Conclusion

• Numerous of attack paths can be targeted

• Systematic and proactive approach can be reached

• Real-time detection and alerts

• Detailed recordings can be triggered for judicial efforts

16 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Future work

• Create plug-in

• Implement design on test network

• Run trial exploit

• Research and prepare other exploits/attacks

17 Managed by UT-Battellefor the U.S. Department of Energy

Acknowlegments

Louis P. Wilder, Christopher Lanclos, Sharon Hastings, Joe Trien George Seweryniak, Debbie McCoy, Rashida Askia and Cindy Latham

The Research Alliance in Math and Science program is sponsored by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, U.S. Department of Energy.

The work was performed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. De-AC05-00OR22725. This work has been authored by a contractor of the U.S. Government, accordingly, the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce the published form of this contribution, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.