Advances in Topological Vulnerability Analysis

Abstract

Traditionally, network administrators rely on labor-intensive processes for tracking network configurations and vulnerabilities. This requires a great deal of expertise, and is error prone because of the complexity of networks and associated security data. The interdependencies of network vulnerabilities make traditional point-wise vulnerability analysis inadequate. We describe a Topological Vulnerability Analysis (TVA) approach that analyzes vulnerability dependencies and shows all possible attack paths into a network. From models of the network vulnerabilities and potential attacker exploits, we compute attack graphs that convey the impact of individual and combined vulnerabilities on overall security. TVA finds potential paths of vulnerability through a network, showing exactly how attackers may penetrate a network. From this, we identify key vulnerabilities and provide strategies for protection of critical network assets. TVA provides predictive context for network hardening, intrusion detection deployment and alarm correlation, and optimal attack response. Further, it employs efficient algorithms that scale well to larger networks.

Adaptive Modelling for Security Analysis of Networked Control Systems

“…Tools to perform an attack graph based security analysis are described by Ou et al (2005); Lippmann et al (2006); Noel et al (2009);Jajodia et al (2011). It is typical for these approaches to separate the system model generation from the model analysis.…”

A property based security risk analysis through weighted simulation

“…Another recent work combines attack trees with Markov processes [17]. Noel et al [18] insert a variety of information gathered by life-systems into their otherwise static attack graph based topological vulnerability analysis. While such works give static probabilities to events representing e.g.…”

finding multi-step attacks in computer networks using heuristic search and mobile ambients

“…MsAMS contributes to the field of Attack Graphs, an active area of research and development. For example, very recently two prominent approaches reviewed in Chapter 2 have turned commercial: NetSPA that became GARNET [229], and CAULDRON [155]. This is an indication that Attack Graphs, although not a silver bullet for information security, raise market as well as academic interest.…”

“…In this section, we evaluate this complexity using our benchmark of tests with practical values of n, similar to other authors in the field of Attack Graphs, e.g. [155,164].…”

“…Noel et at. [155] report a worst-case complexity of O(n 2 ) for their most recent version of CAULDRON, turned into a commercial product, where n is the number of hosts in the network model.…”