Smart city improved the quality of life for the citizens by implementing information communication technology (ICT) such as the internet of things (IoT). Nevertheless, the smart city is a critical environment that needs to secure it is network and data from intrusions and attacks. This work proposes a hybrid deep learning (DL) model for cyber threat intelligence (CTI) to improve threats classification performance based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and quasi-recurrent neural network (QRNN). We use QRNN to provide a real-time threat classification model. The evaluation results of the proposed model compared to the state-of-the-art models show that the proposed model outperformed the other models. Therefore, it will help in classifying the smart city threats in a reasonable time.
A formal cyber reasoning framework for automating the threat hunting process is described. The new cyber reasoning methodology introduces an operational semantics that operates over three subspaces -- knowledge, hypothesis, and action -- to enable human-machine co-creation of threat hypotheses and protective recommendations. An implementation of this framework shows that the approach is practical and can be used to generalize evidence-based multi-criteria threat investigations.
Cybersecurity is an inherent characteristic that should be addressed before the large deployment of smart city applications. Recently, Blockchain appears as a promising technology to provide several cybersecurity aspects of smart city applications. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the existing blockchain-based solutions for the cybersecurity of the main smart city applications, namely smart healthcare, smart transportation, smart agriculture, supply chain management, smart grid, and smart homes. We describe the existing solutions and we discuss their merits and limits. Moreover, w…
Scaling the cyber hunt problem poses several key technical challenges. Detecting and characterizing cyber threats at scale in large enterprise networks is hard because of the vast quantity and complexity of the data that must be analyzed as adversaries deploy varied and evolving tactics to accomplish their goals. There is a great need to automate all aspects, and, indeed, the workflow of cyber hunting. AI offers many ways to support this. We have developed the WILEE system that automates cyber threat hunting by translating high-level threat descriptions into many possible concrete implementati…
University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩郡分校）；University of North Carolina, Wilmington（北卡罗来纳大学威尔明顿分校）
Cyber-defense systems are being developed to automatically ingest Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) that contains semi-structured data and/or text to populate knowledge graphs. A potential risk is that fake CTI can be generated and spread through Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) communities or on the Web to effect a data poisoning attack on these systems. Adversaries can use fake CTI examples as training input to subvert cyber defense systems, forcing the model to learn incorrect inputs to serve their malicious needs. In this paper, we automatically generate fake CTI text descriptions using tran…
Since the term "Cyber threat hunting" was introduced in 2016, there have been a rising trend of proactive defensive measure to create more cyber security. This research will look into peer reviewed literature on the subject of cyber threat hunting. Our study shows an increase in the field with methods of machine learning.\\ Keywords: Cyber threat, Cyber security, threat hunting , security system, data driven, Intel, analytic driven, TTPs
Technological advances have enabled multiple countries to consider implementing Smart City Infrastructure to provide in-depth insights into different data points and enhance the lives of citizens. Unfortunately, these new technological implementations also entice adversaries and cybercriminals to execute cyber-attacks and commit criminal acts on these modern infrastructures. Given the borderless nature of cyber attacks, varying levels of understanding of smart city infrastructure and ongoing investigation workloads, law enforcement agencies and investigators would be hard-pressed to respond to…
The cybersecurity threat landscape has lately become overly complex. Threat actors leverage weaknesses in the network and endpoint security in a very coordinated manner to perpetuate sophisticated attacks that could bring down the entire network and many critical hosts in the network. Increasingly advanced deep and machine learning-based solutions have been used in threat detection and protection. The application of these techniques has been reviewed well in the scientific literature. Deep Reinforcement Learning has shown great promise in developing AI-based solutions for areas that had earlie…
Cyber threat intelligence is a relatively new field that has grown from two distinct fields, cyber security and intelligence. As such, it draws knowledge from and mixes the two fields. Yet, looking into current scientific research on cyber threat intelligence research, it is relatively scarce, which opens up a lot of opportunities. In this paper we define what cyber threat intelligence is, briefly review some aspects for cyber threat intelligence. Then, we analyze existing research fields that are much older that cyber threat intelligence but related to it. This opens up an opportunity to draw…
Understanding the properties exhibited by Spatial-temporal evolution of cyber attacks improve cyber threat intelligence. In addition, better understanding on threats patterns is a key feature for cyber threats prevention, detection, and management and for enhancing defenses. In this work, we study different aspects of emerging threats in the wild shared by 160,000 global participants form all industries. First, we perform an exploratory data analysis of the collected cyber threats. We investigate the most targeted countries, most common malwares and the distribution of attacks frequency by loc…
The ever increasing number of cyber attacks requires the cyber security and forensic specialists to detect, analyze and defend against the cyber threats in almost realtime. In practice, timely dealing with such a large number of attacks is not possible without deeply perusing the attack features and taking corresponding intelligent defensive actions, this in essence defines cyber threat intelligence notion. However, such an intelligence would not be possible without the aid of artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced data mining techniques to collect, analyse, and interpret cyber…
Developing intelligent, interoperable Cyber Threat Information (CTI) sharing technologies can help build strong defences against modern cyber threats. CTIs allow the community to share information about cybercriminals' threats and vulnerabilities and countermeasures to defend themselves or detect malicious activity. A crucial need for success is that the data connected to cyber risks be understandable, organized, and of good quality. The receiving parties may grasp its content and utilize it effectively. This article describes an innovative cyber threat intelligence management platform (CTIMP)…
In this paper, we present an operational system for cyber threat intelligence gathering from various social platforms on the Internet particularly sites on the darknet and deepnet. We focus our attention to collecting information from hacker forum discussions and marketplaces offering products and services focusing on malicious hacking. We have developed an operational system for obtaining information from these sites for the purposes of identifying emerging cyber threats. Currently, this system collects on average 305 high-quality cyber threat warnings each week. These threat warnings include…
As the cyber threat landscape is constantly becoming increasingly complex and polymorphic, the more critical it becomes to understand the enemy and its modus operandi for anticipatory threat reduction. Even though the cyber security community has developed a certain maturity in describing and sharing technical indicators for informing defense components, we still struggle with non-uniform, unstructured, and ambiguous higher-level information, such as the threat actor context, thereby limiting our ability to correlate with different sources to derive more contextual, accurate, and relevant inte…
In military organizations, Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) supports cyberspace operations by providing the commander with essential information about the adversary, their capabilities and objectives as they operate through cyberspace. This paper, combines CTI with the MITRE ATT&CK framework in order to establish an adversary profile. In addition, it identifies the characteristics of the attack phase by analyzing the WhisperGate operation that occurred in Ukraine in January 2022, and suggests the minimum essential measures for defense.
As Critical National Infrastructures are becoming more vulnerable to cyber attacks, their protection becomes a significant issue for any organization as well as a nation. Moreover, the ability to attribute is a vital element of avoiding impunity in cyberspace. In this article, we present main threats to critical infrastructures along with protective measures that one nation can take, and which are classified according to legal, technical, organizational, capacity building, and cooperation aspects. Finally we provide an overview of current methods and practices regarding cyber attribution and c…
Preventing organizations from Cyber exploits needs timely intelligence about Cyber vulnerabilities and attacks, referred as threats. Cyber threat intelligence can be extracted from various sources including social media platforms where users publish the threat information in real time. Gathering Cyber threat intelligence from social media sites is a time consuming task for security analysts that can delay timely response to emerging Cyber threats. We propose a framework for automatically gathering Cyber threat intelligence from Twitter by using a novelty detection model. Our model learns the f…
An Unsupervised Learning Approach For A Reliable Profiling Of Cyber Threat Actors Reported Globally Based On Complete Contextual Information Of Cyber Attacks
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Case Western Reserve University（凯斯西储大学）；Nanjing University（南京大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）
Log-based cyber threat hunting has emerged as an important solution to counter sophisticated attacks. However, existing approaches require non-trivial efforts of manual query construction and have overlooked the rich external threat knowledge provided by open-source Cyber Threat Intelligence (OSCTI). To bridge the gap, we propose ThreatRaptor, a system that facilitates threat hunting in computer systems using OSCTI. Built upon system auditing frameworks, ThreatRaptor provides (1) an unsupervised, light-weight, and accurate NLP pipeline that extracts structured threat behaviors from unstructure…
This paper is devoted to measuring the security of cyber networks under advanced persistent threats (APTs). First, an APT-based cyber attack-defense process is modeled as an individual-level dynamical system. Second, the dynamic model is shown to exhibit the global stability. On this basis, a new security metric of cyber networks, which is known as the limit security, is defined as the limit expected fraction of compromised nodes in the networks. Next, the influence of different factors on the limit security is illuminated through theoretical analysis and computer simulation. This work helps u…
Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is practical real-world information that is collected with the purpose of assessing threats in cyber-physical systems (CPS). A practical notation for sharing CTI is STIX. STIX offers facilities to create, visualise and share models; however, even a moderately simple project can be represented in STIX as a quite complex graph, suggesting to spread CTI across multiple simpler sub-projects. Our tool aims to enhance the STIX-based modelling task in contexts when such simplifications are infeasible. Examples can be the microgrid and, more in general, the smart grid.
Motivated by the introduction of CACAO, the first open standard that harmonizes the way we document courses of action in a machine-readable format for interoperability, and the benefits for cybersecurity operations derived from utilizing, and coupling and sharing course of action playbooks with cyber threat intelligence, we introduce a uniform metadata template that supports managing and integrating course of action playbooks into knowledge representation and knowledge management systems. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach through two use-case implementations. We utilize the play…
Cyber security is considered a necessity for anyone in todays modern world. Awareness of cyber security standards and best practices have become mandatory to safeguard ones child in this day and age. High schoolers today do not understand cyber security threats due to the lack of parental involvement or the lack of educational material and courses in high school. This study developed a framework that addresses the lack of cybersecurity awareness for high school students. The proposed framework gives a flow of steps to provide effective awareness approaches for k12. This was achieved using an a…
Identification of cyber threats is one of the essential tasks for security teams. Currently, cyber threats can be identified using knowledge organized into various formats, enumerations, and knowledge bases. This paper studies the current challenges of identifying vulnerabilities and threats in cyberspace using enumerations and data about assets. Although enumerations are used in practice, we point out several issues that still decrease the quality of vulnerability and threat identification. Since vulnerability identification methods are based on network monitoring and agents, the issues are r…
Cyber security threats to the payment and banking system have become a worldwide menace. The phenomenon has forced financial institutions to take risks as part of their business model. Hence, deliberate investment in sophisticated technologies and security measures has become imperative to safeguard against heavy financial losses and information breaches that may occur due to cyber-attacks. The proliferation of cyber crimes is a huge concern for various stakeholders in the banking sector. Usually, cyber-attacks are carried out via software systems running on a computing system in cyberspace. A…
University of Maryland, Baltimore County（马里兰大学巴尔的摩郡分校）
Keeping up with threat intelligence is a must for a security analyst today. There is a volume of information present in `the wild' that affects an organization. We need to develop an artificial intelligence system that scours the intelligence sources, to keep the analyst updated about various threats that pose a risk to her organization. A security analyst who is better `tapped in' can be more effective. In this paper we present, Cyber-All-Intel an artificial intelligence system to aid a security analyst. It is a system for knowledge extraction, representation and analytics in an end-to-end pi…
University of Louisiana at Lafayette（路易斯安那大学拉法叶分校）；University of Regina（里贾纳大学）；Tampere University（坦佩雷大学）；Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology（孟加拉国工程技术大学）
Due to the variety of cyber-attacks or threats, the cybersecurity community enhances the traditional security control mechanisms to an advanced level so that automated tools can encounter potential security threats. Very recently, Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) has been presented as one of the proactive and robust mechanisms because of its automated cybersecurity threat prediction. Generally, CTI collects and analyses data from various sources e.g., online security forums, social media where cyber enthusiasts, analysts, even cybercriminals discuss cyber or computer security-related topics and…
Traditional Cyber-physical Systems(CPSs) were not built with cybersecurity in mind. They operated on separate Operational Technology (OT) networks. As these systems now become more integrated with Information Technology (IT) networks based on IP, they expose vulnerabilities that can be exploited by the attackers through these IT networks. The attackers can control such systems and cause behavior that jeopardizes the performance and safety measures that were originally designed into the system. In this paper, we explore the approaches to identify threats to CPSs and ensure the quality of the cr…
