As many industries shift towards centralised controlled information systems for monitoring and control, more importance is being placed upon technologies such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisitions industrial systems (SCADA). This focus on integration and interoperability presents numerous challenges for security personnel and organisational management alike. It becomes paramount therefore to reciprocate this new direction within an organisation with adequate plans and frameworks that ensure protection and security of its SCADA architecture. A clear understanding of the relevant threats and vulnerabilities is critical for adopting/developing appropriate policy and frameworks. To this end, in this research we identify and analyse relevant SCADA security threats and vulnerabilities and present a simple scheme to classify them for better understanding.
On a regular basis, we read in the news about cyber-attacks on critical infrastructures, such as power plants. Such infrastructures rely on the so-called Industrial Control Systems (ICS) / Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks. By hacking the devices in such systems and networks, attackers may take over the control of critical infrastructures, with potentially devastating consequences. This report focusses on critical infrastructures in the Netherlands and investigates three main questions: 1) How many ICS/SCADA devices located in the Netherlands can be easily found by pote…
The security of industrial network has become an increasing concern in industry infrastructure operation. Motivated by on-going collaborations with Fortinet Corp., a security company, this project implements a testbed for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network security research by software emulation. Concepts about SCADA and Modbus protocol are reviewed in the report. Besides Modbus, vulnerabilities about several other industrial protocols are also studied for this project. In this report, a typical tank system following Modbus protocol is built as a testbed. Both attack and …
Effectiveness of information security of automated process control systems, as well as of SCADA, depends on data transmissions protection technologies applied on transport environments components. This article investigates the problem of detecting attacks on WSN (wireless sensor networks) of SCADA systems. As the result of analytical studies the authors developed the detailed classification of external attacks on sensor networks and brought the detailed description of attacking impacts on components of SCADA systems in accordance with selected directions of attacks. Reviewed the methods of int…
Pipeline bursting, production lines shut down, frenzy traffic, trains confrontation, nuclear reactor shut down, disrupted electric supply, interrupted oxygen supply in ICU - these catastrophic events could result because of an erroneous SCADA system/ Industrial Control System(ICS). SCADA systems have become an essential part of automated control and monitoring of many of the Critical Infrastructures (CI). Modern SCADA systems have evolved from standalone systems into sophisticated complex, open systems, connected to the Internet. This geographically distributed modern SCADA system is vulnerabl…
Many public sources of cyber threat and vulnerability information exist to help defend cyber systems. This paper links MITRE's ATT&CK MATRIX of Tactics and Techniques, NIST's Common Weakness Enumerations (CWE), Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE), and Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification list (CAPEC), to gain further insight from alerts, threats and vulnerabilities. We preserve all entries and relations of the sources, while enabling bi-directional, relational path tracing within an aggregate data graph called BRON. In one example, we use BRON to enhance the information …
Many applications have security vulnerabilities that can be exploited. It is practically impossible to find all of them due to the NP-complete nature of the testing problem. Security solutions provide defenses against these attacks through continuous application testing, fast-patching of vulnerabilities, automatic deployment of patches, and virtual patching detection techniques deployed in network and endpoint security tools. These techniques are limited by the need to find vulnerabilities before the black-hats. We propose an innovative technique to virtually patch vulnerabilities before they …
Advances in the development and increased availability of smart devices ranging from small sensors to complex cloud infrastructures as well as various networking technologies and communication protocols have supported the rapid expansion of Internet of Things deployments. The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol has been widely accepted and used in the IoT domain to support interactions among heterogeneous IoT devices, in part due to zero configuration implementation which makes it feasible for use in large-scale networks. The popularity and ubiquity of UPnP to support IoT systems necessita…
In multi-tier network systems, custom applications, Web services and platform environments, storing data and information assets becomes a challenge for any organisation. Although there are different methods to secure network systems, the best way to test the level of security is to conduct penetration testing. In this paper, we describe how we performed live penetration testing for a particular network, namely, 192.168.3.0/24 (Case Study) by identifying the system vulnerabilities to enable its penetration. After compromising the system, critical data (Flags) must be found, indicating our succe…
Qualifying and ranking threat degrees of vulnerabilities in cloud service are known to be full of challenges. Although there have been several efforts aiming to address this problem, most of them are too simple or cannot be applied into cloud infrastructure. This paper aims to propose a novel framework to qualify and rank the vulnerabilities based on their threat degrees in cloud service. Through inputting or constructing service dependency graph, our framework is able to generate the importance degree of each service and the ranking list of all the vulnerabilities in cloud service. Moreover, …
Recently, bug-bounty programs have gained popularity and become a significant part of the security culture of many organizations. Bug-bounty programs enable organizations to enhance their security posture by harnessing the diverse expertise of crowds of external security experts (i.e., bug hunters). Nonetheless, quantifying the benefits of bug-bounty programs remains elusive, which presents a significant challenge for managing them. Previous studies focused on measuring their benefits in terms of the number of vulnerabilities reported or based on the properties of the reported vulnerabilities,…
Current threat models typically consider all possible ways an attacker can penetrate a system and assign probabilities to each path according to some metric (e.g. time-to-compromise). In this paper we discuss how this view hinders the realness of both technical (e.g. attack graphs) and strategic (e.g. game theory) approaches of current threat modeling, and propose to steer away by looking more carefully at attack characteristics and attacker environment. We use a toy threat model for ICS attacks to show how a realistic view of attack instances can emerge from a simple analysis of attack phases…
The continued integration of technology into all aspects of society stresses the need to identify and understand the risk associated with assimilating new technologies. This necessity is heightened when technology is used for medical purposes like ambulatory devices that monitor a patient's vital signs. This integration creates environments that are conducive to malicious activities. The potential impact presents new challenges for the medical community. Hence, this research presents attack graph modeling as a viable solution to identifying vulnerabilities, assessing risk, and forming mitigati…
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center（IBM托马斯·J·沃森研究中心）；IBM Security X-Force Red（IBM安全X-Force红队）；Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute（伦斯勒理工学院）
Modern organizations struggle with insurmountable number of vulnerabilities that are discovered and reported by their network and application vulnerability scanners. Therefore, prioritization and focus become critical, to spend their limited time on the highest risk vulnerabilities. In doing this, it is important for these organizations not only to understand the technical descriptions of the vulnerabilities, but also to gain insights into attackers' perspectives. In this work, we use machine learning and natural language processing techniques, as well as several publicly available data sets t…
Information security is the protection of information from a wide range of threats in order to ensure success business continuity by minimizing risks and maximizing the return of investments and business opportunities. In this paper, we study and discuss the software vulnerabilities, banking threats, botnets and propose the malware self-protection technologies.
Software updates reduce the opportunity for exploitation. However, since updates can also introduce breaking changes, enterprises face the problem of balancing the need to secure software with updates with the need to support operations. We propose a methodology to quantitatively investigate the effectiveness of software updates strategies against attacks of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). We consider strategies where the vendor updates are the only limiting factors to cases in which enterprises delay updates from 1 to 7 months based on SANS data. Our manually curated dataset of APT attack…
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（日本产业技术综合研究所）；Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.（住友电气工业株式会社）
In this article, we propose the Artificial Intelligence Security Taxonomy to systematize the knowledge of threats, vulnerabilities, and security controls of machine-learning-based (ML-based) systems. We first classify the damage caused by attacks against ML-based systems, define ML-specific security, and discuss its characteristics. Next, we enumerate all relevant assets and stakeholders and provide a general taxonomy for ML-specific threats. Then, we collect a wide range of security controls against ML-specific threats through an extensive review of recent literature. Finally, we classify the…
The Ohio State University（俄亥俄州立大学）；Leidos Inc.（莱多斯公司）；FireEye LLC（火眼有限责任公司）
Breaking cybersecurity events are shared across a range of websites, including security blogs (FireEye, Kaspersky, etc.), in addition to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In this paper, we investigate methods to analyze the severity of cybersecurity threats based on the language that is used to describe them online. A corpus of 6,000 tweets describing software vulnerabilities is annotated with authors' opinions toward their severity. We show that our corpus supports the development of automatic classifiers with high precision for this task. Furthermore, we demonstrate the va…
This paper evaluates new security threats due to the processor frontend in modern Intel processors. The root causes of the security threats are the multiple paths in the processor frontend that the micro-operations can take: through the Micro-Instruction Translation Engine (MITE), through the Decode Stream Buffer (DSB), also called the Micro-operation Cache, or through the Loop Stream Detector (LSD). Each path has its own unique timing and power signatures, which lead to the side- and covert-channel attacks presented in this work. Especially, the switching between the different paths leads to …
With the enormous usage of digital media in almost every sphere from education to entertainment, the security of sensitive information has been a concern. As images are the most frequently used means to convey information, therefore the issue related to the privacy preservation needs to be addressed in each of the application domains. There are various security methods proposed by researchers from time to time. This paper presents a review of various image encryption schemes based on fractional integral transform. As the fractional integral transforms have evolved through their applications fr…
Traditional control environments connected to physical systems are being upgraded with novel information and communication technologies. The resulting systems need to be adequately protected. Experimental testbeds are crucial for the study and analysis of ongoing threats against those resulting cyber-physical systems. The research presented in this paper discusses some actions towards the development of a replicable and affordable cyber-physical testbed for training and research. The architecture of the testbed is based on real-world components, and emulates cyber-physical scenarios commanded …
This paper produces a baseline security analysis of the Cloud Computing Operational Environment in terms of threats, vulnerabilities and impacts. An analysis is conducted and the top three threats are identified with recommendations for practitioners. The conclusion of the analysis is that the most serious threats are non-technical and can be solved via management processes rather than technical countermeasures
Researchers and commercial companies have made a lot of efforts on detecting malware in Android platform. However, a recent malware threat, App collusion, makes malware detection challenging. In App collusion, two or more Apps collaborate to perform malicious actions by communicating with each other, which makes single App analysis insufficient. In this paper, we first introduce Android security mechanism and communication channels used by android Applications. Then we summarize the security vulnerabilities and potential threats introduced by App communication. Finally, we discuss state of art…
Cryptocurrency is a novel exploration of a form of currency that proposes a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on blockchain technology and cryptographic theory. While cryptocurrency has the security characteristics of being distributed and tamper-proof, increasing market demand has led to a rise in malicious transactions and attacks, thereby exposing cryptocurrency to vulnerabilities, privacy issues, and security threats. Particularly concerning are the emerging types of attacks and threats, which have made securing cryptocurrency increasingly urgent. Therefore, this paper classifi…
Blockchains are distributed systems, in which security is a critical factor for their success. However, despite their increasing popularity and adoption, there is a lack of standardized models that study blockchain-related security threats. To fill this gap, the main focus of our work is to systematize and extend the knowledge about the security and privacy aspects of blockchains and contribute to the standardization of this domain. We propose the security reference architecture (SRA) for blockchains, which adopts a stacked model (similar to the ISO/OSI) describing the nature and hierarchy of …
Traditionally, applications that are used in large and small enterprises were deployed on "bare metal" servers installed with operating systems. Recently, the use of multiple virtual machines (VMs) on the same physical server was adopted due to cost reduction and flexibility. Nowadays, containers have become popular for application deployment due to smaller footprints than the VMs, their ability to start and stop more quickly, and their capability to pack the application binaries and their dependencies in standalone units for seamless portability. A typical container ecosystem includes a code …
As smart bands make life more convenient and provide a positive lifestyle, many people are now using them. Since smart bands deal with private information, security design and implementation for smart band system become necessary. To make a trustworthy smart band, we must derive the security requirements of the system first, and then design the system satisfying the security requirements. In this paper, we apply threat modeling techniques such as Data Flow Diagram, STRIDE, and Attack Tree to the smart band system to identify threats and derive security requirements accordingly. Through threat …
