In this paper, we propose techniques and architecture for securing services that are hosted in a ... more In this paper, we propose techniques and architecture for securing services that are hosted in a multi-tenant networked cloud infrastructures. Our architecture is based on trusted virtual domains and takes into account both security policies of the tenant domains as well as specific security policies of the virtual machines in the tenant domains. We describe techniques for detecting a range of attacks such as attacks between the virtual machines within a trusted virtual domain, attacks between the virtual machines in different domains, malicious insider attacks and attacks against specific services such as DNS, database and web servers within a domain. We address security policies for trusted virtual domain management such as secure addition and deletion of a virtual machine and the revocation of privileges associated with a virtual machine in a domain. We also discuss forensic analysis of attacks and fine granular detection of malicious entities and mechanisms for restoration of services. Furthermore the proposed architecture provides mechanisms for enhancing the assurance of communications between the virtual machines in different domains. Finally, we present the implementation of our security architecture using Xen and illustrate how our architecture is able to secure services in networked cloud infrastructures.
In this paper, we propose an integrated security architecture which combines policy based access ... more In this paper, we propose an integrated security architecture which combines policy based access control with intrusion detection techniques and trusted computing technologies for securing distributed applications running on virtualised systems. Our security architecture incorporates access control security policies for secure interactions between applications and virtual machines in different physical virtualized servers. It provides intrusion detection and trusted attestation techniques to detect and counteract dynamic attacks in an efficient manner. We demonstrate how this integrated security architecture is used to secure the life cycle of virtual machines including dynamic hosting and allocation of resources as well as migration of virtual machines across different physical servers. We discuss the implementation of the developed architecture and show how the architecture can counteract attack scenarios involving malicious users exploiting vulnerabilities to achieve privilege escalation and then using the compromised machines to generate further attacks. The feedback between the various security components of our security architecture plays a critical role in detecting sophisticated, dynamically changing attacks, thereby increasing the resilience of the overall secure system.
Virtualisation is one of the important technologies for the realisation of cloud computing. A Vir... more Virtualisation is one of the important technologies for the realisation of cloud computing. A Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is an additional software layer which has complete control on the physical resources and enables to run multiple operating systems on a scalable computer. Recently some of the techniques have been proposed to develop Trusted Virtual domains. A trusted virtual domain (TVD) enables grouping of related virtual machines running on separate physical machine into a single network domain with a unified security policy. In this paper we analyze the security issues related to TVD and propose security techniques to deal with the attacks in TVD.
Today most of the desktops, laptops are being shipped with the TPM and Virtualisation technology ... more Today most of the desktops, laptops are being shipped with the TPM and Virtualisation technology is widely being deployed. On the other hand, we are witnessing an increasing number of zero day attacks. Our analysis confirms that Local Area Networks are highly vulnerable to such attacks since there is free communication between the hosts in the LAN. A single compromised host can severely degrade the services in the traditional LAN and it is extremely difficult task for the security administrator to determine the compromised host that is generating attack traffic. In this paper we propose techniques to enhance the security in traditional LAN by making use of the trusted computing and virtualisation technologies. Often virtualisation is considered as a technology which enables to run multiple computers on a single server. We will show that virtualisation technology has significant benefits even if a single virtual machine is hosted on each VMM. Our model enables the security administrator to enforce security policies on the traffic that can be placed on the LAN medium. Hence our model efficiently deals with the attack at the VMM that is hosting the compromised virtual machine. The security can be enhanced furthermore by using the TPM technology to secure the virtualized local area networks. We will also present detail analysis of different cases scenarios on how the proposed model can enhance the security of the local area networks. There are several advantages with our model. Emerging attacks such as Conficker remain dormant in our proposed architecture in order to avoid detection. Hence our model can transform the highly vulnerable traditional LANs into trust enhanced and secure virtualized local area networks.
Attacks on the organization networks can be classified as external and internal attacks. For the ... more Attacks on the organization networks can be classified as external and internal attacks. For the purpose of this paper we consider that external attacks are generated by the attackers or from hosts outside the organization, and internal attacks are generated by malicious insiders within the organization. Insider attacks have always been challenging to deal with as insiders have legitimate and physical access to the systems within the organization, and they have knowledge of the organization networks and more importantly, are aware of the security environment enforced within the organization. In this paper we propose novel trust enhanced security techniques to deal with the insider attack problem. Our architecture detects the attacks by monitoring the user activity as well as the state of the system using trusted computing in exposing and analyzing suspicious behaviour. We will demonstrate how an insider can exploit the weakness in the systems to generate different attacks and how our architecture can help to prevent such attacks.
Today, cloud computing is one of the popular technologies. In addition to this, most of the hardw... more Today, cloud computing is one of the popular technologies. In addition to this, most of the hardware that is being shipped today is equipped with the TPM which can be used for realization of trusted platforms. Recently several TPM attestation techniques such as binary attestation and property based attestation techniques have been proposed but there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed for using these techniques in practice. In this paper we consider an architecture where different services are hosted on the cloud infrastructure by multiple cloud customers (tenants). Then we consider an attacker model that is specific to the cloud and some of the challenges with the current TPM based attestation techniques. We will also propose a novel trust enhanced security model for cloud which overcomes the challenges with the current TPM based attestation techniques and efficiently deals with the attacks in the cloud. In our model, the cloud service provider is used as the Certification Authority (CA) for the tenant virtual machines. The CA only certifies the basic security properties which are the assurance on the traffic originating from the tenant virtual machine and validation of the tenant virtual machine transactions. The components of the CA monitor the interactions of the tenant virtual machine for the certified properties. Since the tenant virtual machines are running on the cloud service provider infrastructure, it is aware of the dynamic changes to the tenant virtual machine. The CA can terminate the ongoing transactions and/or dynamically isolate the tenant virtual machine if there is a variation in the behaviour of the tenant virtual machine from the certified properties. Hence our model can be used to address the challenges with the current TPM based attestation techniques and efficiently deal with the attacks in the cloud. We will present implementation of our model on Xen and how it deals with the attacks in different attack case scenarios. We will also show that our model is beneficial for the cloud service providers, tenants and tenant customers.
Currently critical infrastructures such as SCADA are increasingly using commodity based hardware,... more Currently critical infrastructures such as SCADA are increasingly using commodity based hardware, software and TCP/IP protocol based communication. However the size of the current operating systems and applications are continuously increasing and it is extremely difficult task for the critical infrastructure operators for securing their systems from attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for detection of attacks on critical infrastructures and techniques for enforcing additional security policies for securing such systems.
Today, PDF is one of the widely used applications for sharing documents. Some of the important fa... more Today, PDF is one of the widely used applications for sharing documents. Some of the important factors for the popular use of the PDF application are due to its platform independency and rich digital offerings such as ability to include multimedia files, direct URL access and HTTP communication. However its wider acceptance among the user community has also attracted the attackers to develop and spread malware using PDF files. Most of the existing security tools are not equipped to deal with the attacks related to PDF. In this paper we present different techniques that can be used by an attacker to generate PDF attacks. Then we propose portable document scanner (PDSCAN) which can detect the attacks by analyzing the suspicious objects and the scripts that are embedded in the documents. PDSCAN makes use of dynamic and static analysis techniques to deal with the malware. Finally we present detail analysis of a malicious PDF file in VirtualBox environment.
In this paper we propose a dynamically invoked Service Based Access Control (SBAC) Model to effic... more In this paper we propose a dynamically invoked Service Based Access Control (SBAC) Model to efficiently deal with the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The main idea of the SBAC is based on the observation that if the routers have information about the services that are running on the end host and can identify the upper layer traffic from the IP packet payload, then it becomes easy to differentiate between legitimate and attack traffic for that particular victim server. To minimise the overhead on the routers, the SBAC model is invoked during the attack times only and the victim's traffic is processed separately. The boundary routers in SBAC model validate each incoming packet to the victim on a per server basis. Only the packets that are considered to be accessing the legitimate services are passed and the remaining packets are dropped. Hence, at this stage the victim's network is immune to any dynamic changes in attack pattern if the attack packets are not accessing the legitimate services at the victim end. The packets that are considered to be accessing legitimate services of the victim machine/network are marked with a unique ID and destined to the victim. If any of the received packets are found to be malicious, the unique ID enables the victim to identify service specific attack signature for each ingress SBAC router and prevent the attack traffic at that particular router. We will also discuss how the SBAC model deals with attacks on the infrastructure of the Autonomous System.
Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to provide health related information to healthc... more Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to provide health related information to healthcare related services on the Internet. However such devices have limited resources to enforce strong security measures and are easily vulnerable to attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for counteracting denial of service attacks on mobile devices that are providing the user's health related information and for securing the communication between mobile nodes and healthcare service providers on the Internet.
Significant developments in the recent times have led to an increasing use of mobile devices such... more Significant developments in the recent times have led to an increasing use of mobile devices such as smart phones in accessing Internet services and applications over wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a security architecture for counteracting denial of service attacks in Beyond 3G (B3G) network architecture with mobile nodes. We describe the system architecture and discuss the different cases of attack scenarios involving the mobility of the attacking and victim nodes. Our proposed solution takes into account practical issues such as limited resources of the mobile nodes. It has distinct advantages such as monitoring of the traffic to the victim node and the attack traffic being dropped before reaching the victim; the ability to traceback the attacking node and prevent the attack at the home agent or foreign agent that is closer to the attacking node; and the ability to deal with dynamic changes in attack traffic patterns. We also present an analysis of our proposed architecture as well as simulation results.
We propose security architecture based on virtual machine monitor to efficiently deal with attack... more We propose security architecture based on virtual machine monitor to efficiently deal with attacks on virtual machines. We will show that our model is capable of detecting suspicious processes running in the virtual machine, can detect and prevent different types of attacks including zero day attacks by monitoring the virtual machine traffic and the processes that are generating or receiving the traffic. The architecture also makes use of sharing information about the suspicious behaviour among multiple Intrusion detection systems deployed in different virtual machine monitors. We describe the implementation of the proposed architecture and present a detailed analysis of how our architecture can be used to detect zero day attacks.
Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to access data services in addition to the voice... more Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to access data services in addition to the voice communications. However such devices have limited resources to enforce strong security measures and hence they are easily vulnerable to attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for securing mobile devices from denial of service attacks. We will make use of the IPSec protocol for secure traceback and preventing the attack upstream. Finally we present the implementation and performance analysis of our model.
In this paper we propose comprehensive security architecture called VICTOR to deal with different... more In this paper we propose comprehensive security architecture called VICTOR to deal with different types of attacks on virtual machines. Our model takes into account the specific characteristics of operating system and applications running in each virtual machine (VM) at a fine granular level to deal with the attacks. Our architecture has several components such as entity validation, intrusion detection engine and dynamic analyzer. The entity validation component is used in the detection of attack traffic with spoofed source address, secure logging, and capturing information of the operating system and applications running in the virtual machines. The intrusion detection engine component is used for detection of known attacks and suspicious behaviour by monitoring the incoming and outgoing traffic of virtual machines. The dynamic analyzer i s used for detection and validation of suspicious processes, detection of zero day attacks and fine granular isolation of malicious process or application that is generating the attack traffic.
Malware is one of the significant problems in the current Internet. Often security tool vendors d... more Malware is one of the significant problems in the current Internet. Often security tool vendors develop an attack signature to deal with the attacks. However attack techniques such as polymorphism and metamorphism can be used by the attacker to generate multiple variants of the malware and complicate the signature identification. In this paper we present our analysis on sample set of malware and then discuss how MAEC's taxonomy can help to address the malware problem. .
—A virtual domain enables grouping of related virtual machines running on separate physical machi... more —A virtual domain enables grouping of related virtual machines running on separate physical machine into a single network domain with a unified security policy. Since the virtual machines can be running different operating systems and applications, the attacker can exploit even a single vulnerability in any of the operating system or applications in a single virtual machine to attack other machines in the virtual domain. There is a need to develop intrusion detection techniques to deal with different types of attacks in virtual domains. In this paper we consider the design choices for attack detection and propose intrusion detection architecture to deal with attacks in virtual domains. Our architecture takes into account the specific features of the virtual machine as well as security policies of the virtual domains to deal with different types of attacks in virtual machines. We have described the operation of the proposed system architecture in detail. Finally we present how our model can efficiently deal with different types of attacks and performance analysis of our model.
Today, cloud computing is one of the increasingly popular technology where the customer can use t... more Today, cloud computing is one of the increasingly popular technology where the customer can use the resources of the cloud services providers to perform their tasks and only pay for the resources they use. The customer virtual machines in the cloud are vulnerable to different types of attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for securing customer virtual machines from different types of attacks in the Infrastructure as a Service cloud and describe how this can be achieved in practice. Our model enables to differentiate attack traffic originating from each virtual machine even if multiple virtual machines on a VMM are sharing a single IP address.
Currently virtualisation technology is being deployed widely and there is an increasing interest ... more Currently virtualisation technology is being deployed widely and there is an increasing interest on virtualisation based security techniques. There is a need for securing the life cycle of the virtual machine based systems. In this paper, we propose an integrated security architecture that combines access control, intrusion detection and trust management. We demonstrate how this integrated security architecture can be used to secure the life cycle of virtual machines including dynamic hosting and allocation of resources as well as migration of virtual machines across different physical servers. We discuss the implementation aspects of the proposed architecture and show how the architecture can counteract attack scenarios involving malicious users exploiting vulnerabilities to achieve privilege escalation and then using the compromised machines to generate further attacks.
Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the critical services in the current Internet infrastructure. ... more Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the critical services in the current Internet infrastructure. However DNS is vulnerable to a range of attacks. One of the fundamental weaknesses with the existing DNS protocols is that the request and response messages are transmitted on the network as plain text. This paper addresses important threats related to Doman Name System (DNS) using a hypervisor based security architecture. The proposed architecture leverages the hypervisor visibility of the virtual machines' traffic flows to monitor and utilise Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) techniques to inspect and restore data. It also uses inbuilt snapshot/restore capabilities of the hypervisor to completely restore virtual machines if required. Objective of the proposed architecture is not to actively prevent attacks, but provide a means of identifying different attacks by passively monitoring DNS related conversations coming in and out of virtualised system hosting the DNS. Our model can alert the external monitoring agent(s) or security administrator and actively restore the system if the attack has already compromised the DNS. .
Current Internet environment is vulnerable to a range of different types of attacks, and furtherm... more Current Internet environment is vulnerable to a range of different types of attacks, and furthermore, new types of attacks are being discovered on a daily basis. In this paper, we address the design of comprehensive intrusion detection for virtual-machine-based systems. We propose a novel security architecture using a virtual machine monitor-based intrusion detection system called Virtual machine Intrusion deteCTOR (VICTOR), which takes into account the specific characteristics of operating system and applications running in each virtual machine at a fine granular level to detect attacks. The components of our architecture are designed to deal with different types of malicious behaviour. The entity validation component is used for capturing information of the operating system and applications running in the virtual machines, secure logging and detection of attacks that are generated with spoofed source address. The intrusion detection engine component is used for the detection of known attacks and suspicious behaviour of the entities by monitoring the incoming and outgoing traffic of virtual machines. The dynamic analyser is used for detection and validation of hidden processes, detection of zero-day attacks and fine granular isolation of malicious process that is generating the attack traffic. After a zero-day attack is detected, interactive virtual machine technique is used to determine whether the zero-day attack exhibits polymorphic or metamorphic behaviour and develop attack signatures to deal with the attack. We have analysed our architecture with different types of attacks such as hidden processes and attacks such as Slammer. In this paper, we illustrate the operation of our system architecture by considering Slammer worm attack in detail.
In this paper, we propose techniques and architecture for securing services that are hosted in a ... more In this paper, we propose techniques and architecture for securing services that are hosted in a multi-tenant networked cloud infrastructures. Our architecture is based on trusted virtual domains and takes into account both security policies of the tenant domains as well as specific security policies of the virtual machines in the tenant domains. We describe techniques for detecting a range of attacks such as attacks between the virtual machines within a trusted virtual domain, attacks between the virtual machines in different domains, malicious insider attacks and attacks against specific services such as DNS, database and web servers within a domain. We address security policies for trusted virtual domain management such as secure addition and deletion of a virtual machine and the revocation of privileges associated with a virtual machine in a domain. We also discuss forensic analysis of attacks and fine granular detection of malicious entities and mechanisms for restoration of services. Furthermore the proposed architecture provides mechanisms for enhancing the assurance of communications between the virtual machines in different domains. Finally, we present the implementation of our security architecture using Xen and illustrate how our architecture is able to secure services in networked cloud infrastructures.
In this paper, we propose an integrated security architecture which combines policy based access ... more In this paper, we propose an integrated security architecture which combines policy based access control with intrusion detection techniques and trusted computing technologies for securing distributed applications running on virtualised systems. Our security architecture incorporates access control security policies for secure interactions between applications and virtual machines in different physical virtualized servers. It provides intrusion detection and trusted attestation techniques to detect and counteract dynamic attacks in an efficient manner. We demonstrate how this integrated security architecture is used to secure the life cycle of virtual machines including dynamic hosting and allocation of resources as well as migration of virtual machines across different physical servers. We discuss the implementation of the developed architecture and show how the architecture can counteract attack scenarios involving malicious users exploiting vulnerabilities to achieve privilege escalation and then using the compromised machines to generate further attacks. The feedback between the various security components of our security architecture plays a critical role in detecting sophisticated, dynamically changing attacks, thereby increasing the resilience of the overall secure system.
Virtualisation is one of the important technologies for the realisation of cloud computing. A Vir... more Virtualisation is one of the important technologies for the realisation of cloud computing. A Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is an additional software layer which has complete control on the physical resources and enables to run multiple operating systems on a scalable computer. Recently some of the techniques have been proposed to develop Trusted Virtual domains. A trusted virtual domain (TVD) enables grouping of related virtual machines running on separate physical machine into a single network domain with a unified security policy. In this paper we analyze the security issues related to TVD and propose security techniques to deal with the attacks in TVD.
Today most of the desktops, laptops are being shipped with the TPM and Virtualisation technology ... more Today most of the desktops, laptops are being shipped with the TPM and Virtualisation technology is widely being deployed. On the other hand, we are witnessing an increasing number of zero day attacks. Our analysis confirms that Local Area Networks are highly vulnerable to such attacks since there is free communication between the hosts in the LAN. A single compromised host can severely degrade the services in the traditional LAN and it is extremely difficult task for the security administrator to determine the compromised host that is generating attack traffic. In this paper we propose techniques to enhance the security in traditional LAN by making use of the trusted computing and virtualisation technologies. Often virtualisation is considered as a technology which enables to run multiple computers on a single server. We will show that virtualisation technology has significant benefits even if a single virtual machine is hosted on each VMM. Our model enables the security administrator to enforce security policies on the traffic that can be placed on the LAN medium. Hence our model efficiently deals with the attack at the VMM that is hosting the compromised virtual machine. The security can be enhanced furthermore by using the TPM technology to secure the virtualized local area networks. We will also present detail analysis of different cases scenarios on how the proposed model can enhance the security of the local area networks. There are several advantages with our model. Emerging attacks such as Conficker remain dormant in our proposed architecture in order to avoid detection. Hence our model can transform the highly vulnerable traditional LANs into trust enhanced and secure virtualized local area networks.
Attacks on the organization networks can be classified as external and internal attacks. For the ... more Attacks on the organization networks can be classified as external and internal attacks. For the purpose of this paper we consider that external attacks are generated by the attackers or from hosts outside the organization, and internal attacks are generated by malicious insiders within the organization. Insider attacks have always been challenging to deal with as insiders have legitimate and physical access to the systems within the organization, and they have knowledge of the organization networks and more importantly, are aware of the security environment enforced within the organization. In this paper we propose novel trust enhanced security techniques to deal with the insider attack problem. Our architecture detects the attacks by monitoring the user activity as well as the state of the system using trusted computing in exposing and analyzing suspicious behaviour. We will demonstrate how an insider can exploit the weakness in the systems to generate different attacks and how our architecture can help to prevent such attacks.
Today, cloud computing is one of the popular technologies. In addition to this, most of the hardw... more Today, cloud computing is one of the popular technologies. In addition to this, most of the hardware that is being shipped today is equipped with the TPM which can be used for realization of trusted platforms. Recently several TPM attestation techniques such as binary attestation and property based attestation techniques have been proposed but there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed for using these techniques in practice. In this paper we consider an architecture where different services are hosted on the cloud infrastructure by multiple cloud customers (tenants). Then we consider an attacker model that is specific to the cloud and some of the challenges with the current TPM based attestation techniques. We will also propose a novel trust enhanced security model for cloud which overcomes the challenges with the current TPM based attestation techniques and efficiently deals with the attacks in the cloud. In our model, the cloud service provider is used as the Certification Authority (CA) for the tenant virtual machines. The CA only certifies the basic security properties which are the assurance on the traffic originating from the tenant virtual machine and validation of the tenant virtual machine transactions. The components of the CA monitor the interactions of the tenant virtual machine for the certified properties. Since the tenant virtual machines are running on the cloud service provider infrastructure, it is aware of the dynamic changes to the tenant virtual machine. The CA can terminate the ongoing transactions and/or dynamically isolate the tenant virtual machine if there is a variation in the behaviour of the tenant virtual machine from the certified properties. Hence our model can be used to address the challenges with the current TPM based attestation techniques and efficiently deal with the attacks in the cloud. We will present implementation of our model on Xen and how it deals with the attacks in different attack case scenarios. We will also show that our model is beneficial for the cloud service providers, tenants and tenant customers.
Currently critical infrastructures such as SCADA are increasingly using commodity based hardware,... more Currently critical infrastructures such as SCADA are increasingly using commodity based hardware, software and TCP/IP protocol based communication. However the size of the current operating systems and applications are continuously increasing and it is extremely difficult task for the critical infrastructure operators for securing their systems from attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for detection of attacks on critical infrastructures and techniques for enforcing additional security policies for securing such systems.
Today, PDF is one of the widely used applications for sharing documents. Some of the important fa... more Today, PDF is one of the widely used applications for sharing documents. Some of the important factors for the popular use of the PDF application are due to its platform independency and rich digital offerings such as ability to include multimedia files, direct URL access and HTTP communication. However its wider acceptance among the user community has also attracted the attackers to develop and spread malware using PDF files. Most of the existing security tools are not equipped to deal with the attacks related to PDF. In this paper we present different techniques that can be used by an attacker to generate PDF attacks. Then we propose portable document scanner (PDSCAN) which can detect the attacks by analyzing the suspicious objects and the scripts that are embedded in the documents. PDSCAN makes use of dynamic and static analysis techniques to deal with the malware. Finally we present detail analysis of a malicious PDF file in VirtualBox environment.
In this paper we propose a dynamically invoked Service Based Access Control (SBAC) Model to effic... more In this paper we propose a dynamically invoked Service Based Access Control (SBAC) Model to efficiently deal with the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The main idea of the SBAC is based on the observation that if the routers have information about the services that are running on the end host and can identify the upper layer traffic from the IP packet payload, then it becomes easy to differentiate between legitimate and attack traffic for that particular victim server. To minimise the overhead on the routers, the SBAC model is invoked during the attack times only and the victim's traffic is processed separately. The boundary routers in SBAC model validate each incoming packet to the victim on a per server basis. Only the packets that are considered to be accessing the legitimate services are passed and the remaining packets are dropped. Hence, at this stage the victim's network is immune to any dynamic changes in attack pattern if the attack packets are not accessing the legitimate services at the victim end. The packets that are considered to be accessing legitimate services of the victim machine/network are marked with a unique ID and destined to the victim. If any of the received packets are found to be malicious, the unique ID enables the victim to identify service specific attack signature for each ingress SBAC router and prevent the attack traffic at that particular router. We will also discuss how the SBAC model deals with attacks on the infrastructure of the Autonomous System.
Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to provide health related information to healthc... more Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to provide health related information to healthcare related services on the Internet. However such devices have limited resources to enforce strong security measures and are easily vulnerable to attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for counteracting denial of service attacks on mobile devices that are providing the user's health related information and for securing the communication between mobile nodes and healthcare service providers on the Internet.
Significant developments in the recent times have led to an increasing use of mobile devices such... more Significant developments in the recent times have led to an increasing use of mobile devices such as smart phones in accessing Internet services and applications over wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a security architecture for counteracting denial of service attacks in Beyond 3G (B3G) network architecture with mobile nodes. We describe the system architecture and discuss the different cases of attack scenarios involving the mobility of the attacking and victim nodes. Our proposed solution takes into account practical issues such as limited resources of the mobile nodes. It has distinct advantages such as monitoring of the traffic to the victim node and the attack traffic being dropped before reaching the victim; the ability to traceback the attacking node and prevent the attack at the home agent or foreign agent that is closer to the attacking node; and the ability to deal with dynamic changes in attack traffic patterns. We also present an analysis of our proposed architecture as well as simulation results.
We propose security architecture based on virtual machine monitor to efficiently deal with attack... more We propose security architecture based on virtual machine monitor to efficiently deal with attacks on virtual machines. We will show that our model is capable of detecting suspicious processes running in the virtual machine, can detect and prevent different types of attacks including zero day attacks by monitoring the virtual machine traffic and the processes that are generating or receiving the traffic. The architecture also makes use of sharing information about the suspicious behaviour among multiple Intrusion detection systems deployed in different virtual machine monitors. We describe the implementation of the proposed architecture and present a detailed analysis of how our architecture can be used to detect zero day attacks.
Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to access data services in addition to the voice... more Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to access data services in addition to the voice communications. However such devices have limited resources to enforce strong security measures and hence they are easily vulnerable to attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for securing mobile devices from denial of service attacks. We will make use of the IPSec protocol for secure traceback and preventing the attack upstream. Finally we present the implementation and performance analysis of our model.
In this paper we propose comprehensive security architecture called VICTOR to deal with different... more In this paper we propose comprehensive security architecture called VICTOR to deal with different types of attacks on virtual machines. Our model takes into account the specific characteristics of operating system and applications running in each virtual machine (VM) at a fine granular level to deal with the attacks. Our architecture has several components such as entity validation, intrusion detection engine and dynamic analyzer. The entity validation component is used in the detection of attack traffic with spoofed source address, secure logging, and capturing information of the operating system and applications running in the virtual machines. The intrusion detection engine component is used for detection of known attacks and suspicious behaviour by monitoring the incoming and outgoing traffic of virtual machines. The dynamic analyzer i s used for detection and validation of suspicious processes, detection of zero day attacks and fine granular isolation of malicious process or application that is generating the attack traffic.
Malware is one of the significant problems in the current Internet. Often security tool vendors d... more Malware is one of the significant problems in the current Internet. Often security tool vendors develop an attack signature to deal with the attacks. However attack techniques such as polymorphism and metamorphism can be used by the attacker to generate multiple variants of the malware and complicate the signature identification. In this paper we present our analysis on sample set of malware and then discuss how MAEC's taxonomy can help to address the malware problem. .
—A virtual domain enables grouping of related virtual machines running on separate physical machi... more —A virtual domain enables grouping of related virtual machines running on separate physical machine into a single network domain with a unified security policy. Since the virtual machines can be running different operating systems and applications, the attacker can exploit even a single vulnerability in any of the operating system or applications in a single virtual machine to attack other machines in the virtual domain. There is a need to develop intrusion detection techniques to deal with different types of attacks in virtual domains. In this paper we consider the design choices for attack detection and propose intrusion detection architecture to deal with attacks in virtual domains. Our architecture takes into account the specific features of the virtual machine as well as security policies of the virtual domains to deal with different types of attacks in virtual machines. We have described the operation of the proposed system architecture in detail. Finally we present how our model can efficiently deal with different types of attacks and performance analysis of our model.
Today, cloud computing is one of the increasingly popular technology where the customer can use t... more Today, cloud computing is one of the increasingly popular technology where the customer can use the resources of the cloud services providers to perform their tasks and only pay for the resources they use. The customer virtual machines in the cloud are vulnerable to different types of attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for securing customer virtual machines from different types of attacks in the Infrastructure as a Service cloud and describe how this can be achieved in practice. Our model enables to differentiate attack traffic originating from each virtual machine even if multiple virtual machines on a VMM are sharing a single IP address.
Currently virtualisation technology is being deployed widely and there is an increasing interest ... more Currently virtualisation technology is being deployed widely and there is an increasing interest on virtualisation based security techniques. There is a need for securing the life cycle of the virtual machine based systems. In this paper, we propose an integrated security architecture that combines access control, intrusion detection and trust management. We demonstrate how this integrated security architecture can be used to secure the life cycle of virtual machines including dynamic hosting and allocation of resources as well as migration of virtual machines across different physical servers. We discuss the implementation aspects of the proposed architecture and show how the architecture can counteract attack scenarios involving malicious users exploiting vulnerabilities to achieve privilege escalation and then using the compromised machines to generate further attacks.
Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the critical services in the current Internet infrastructure. ... more Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the critical services in the current Internet infrastructure. However DNS is vulnerable to a range of attacks. One of the fundamental weaknesses with the existing DNS protocols is that the request and response messages are transmitted on the network as plain text. This paper addresses important threats related to Doman Name System (DNS) using a hypervisor based security architecture. The proposed architecture leverages the hypervisor visibility of the virtual machines' traffic flows to monitor and utilise Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) techniques to inspect and restore data. It also uses inbuilt snapshot/restore capabilities of the hypervisor to completely restore virtual machines if required. Objective of the proposed architecture is not to actively prevent attacks, but provide a means of identifying different attacks by passively monitoring DNS related conversations coming in and out of virtualised system hosting the DNS. Our model can alert the external monitoring agent(s) or security administrator and actively restore the system if the attack has already compromised the DNS. .
Current Internet environment is vulnerable to a range of different types of attacks, and furtherm... more Current Internet environment is vulnerable to a range of different types of attacks, and furthermore, new types of attacks are being discovered on a daily basis. In this paper, we address the design of comprehensive intrusion detection for virtual-machine-based systems. We propose a novel security architecture using a virtual machine monitor-based intrusion detection system called Virtual machine Intrusion deteCTOR (VICTOR), which takes into account the specific characteristics of operating system and applications running in each virtual machine at a fine granular level to detect attacks. The components of our architecture are designed to deal with different types of malicious behaviour. The entity validation component is used for capturing information of the operating system and applications running in the virtual machines, secure logging and detection of attacks that are generated with spoofed source address. The intrusion detection engine component is used for the detection of known attacks and suspicious behaviour of the entities by monitoring the incoming and outgoing traffic of virtual machines. The dynamic analyser is used for detection and validation of hidden processes, detection of zero-day attacks and fine granular isolation of malicious process that is generating the attack traffic. After a zero-day attack is detected, interactive virtual machine technique is used to determine whether the zero-day attack exhibits polymorphic or metamorphic behaviour and develop attack signatures to deal with the attack. We have analysed our architecture with different types of attacks such as hidden processes and attacks such as Slammer. In this paper, we illustrate the operation of our system architecture by considering Slammer worm attack in detail.
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Papers by Udaya Tupakula