Transcript Slide 1

A Mission-Centric Framework for
Cyber Situational Awareness
Metrics, Lifecycle of Situational Awareness, and
Impact of Automated Tools on Analyst Performance
S. Jajodia, M. Albanese
George Mason University
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
Santa Barbara, CA , November 18-19, 2014
Outline
2

Overview of Mason’s Role

Year 5 Statistics

Metrics
 Measuring
 Network
Security Risk
Diversity

Lifecycle of Situational Awareness

Impact of SA on Analyst Performance

Conclusions
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
3
Overview of Mason’s Role
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Where We Stand in the Project
4
•
•
•
Data Conditioning
Association &
Correlation
•Software
•Sensors, probes
•Hyper Sentry
•Cruiser
Computer network
Real World
Information
Aggregation &
Fusion
•Transaction
Graph
methods
•Damage
assessment
Automated
Reasoning Tools
• R-CAST
• Plan-based
narratives
• Graphical models
• Uncertainty
analysis
• Enterprise Model
• Activity Logs
• IDS reports
• Vulnerabilities
Multi-Sensory Human
Computer Interaction
Cognitive Models & Decision Aids
• Instance Based Learning Models
• Simulation
• Measures of SA & Shared SA
System Analysts
•
•
•
Test-bed
Computer
network
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Our Vision
5
Scenario Analysis & Visualization
Vulnerability Databases
Zero-day Analysis
NVD
CVE
Network Hardening
Unexplained Behavior Analysis
OSVD
Cauldron
Analyst
Topological
Vulnerability Analysis
Cauldron
Index & Data
Structures
Switchwall
Stochastic
Attack Models
Graph
Processing
and Indexing
Situation Knowledge
Reference Model
[Attack Scenario Graphs]
Dependency Analysis
Monitored Network
NSDMiner
Generalized
Dependency Graphs
Alerts/Sensory Data
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview of Contribution – Year 1
6

Technical accomplishments




A topological approach to Vulnerability Analysis that overcomes
the drawbacks of traditional point-wise vulnerability analysis
Preliminary data structures and graph-based techniques and
algorithms for processing alerts/sensory data
A novel security metric, k-zero day safety, to assess how many
zero-day vulnerabilities are required for compromising a network
asset
Major breakthroughs



Capability of processing massive amounts of alerts in real-time
Capability of forecasting possible futures of the current situation
Capability of hardening a network against zero day
vulnerabilities
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview of Contribution – Year 2
7

Technical accomplishments



Generalized dependency graphs, which capture how network
components depend on one other
Probabilistic temporal attack graphs, which encode probabilistic
and temporal knowledge of the attacker’s behavior
Attack scenario graphs, which combine dependency and attack
graphs



Efficient algorithms for both detection and prediction
A preliminary model to identify “unexplained” cyber activities, i.e.,
activities incompatible with any given known activity model
Major breakthroughs

Capability of generating and ranking future attack scenarios in
real time
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview of Contribution – Year 3
8

Technical accomplishments






An efficient and cost-effective algorithm to harden a network with
respect to given security goals
A probabilistic framework for localizing attackers in mobile networks
A probabilistic framework for assessing the completeness and quality of
available attack models (joint work with UMD and ARL)
A suite of novel techniques to automatically discover dependencies
between network services from passively collected network traffic
Switchwall, an Ethernet-based network fingerprinting technique for
detecting unauthorized changes to the L2/L3 network topology
Major breakthroughs

Capability of automatically and efficiently executing several
important analysis tasks, namely hardening, dependency analysis, and
attacker localization
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview of Contribution – Year 4
9


Technical accomplishments

Effective and efficient methods for generating partial attack graphs on
demand in order to enable efficient analysis of zero-day vulnerabilities

A three-step process to assess the risk associated with zero-day
vulnerabilities

A prototype of the probabilistic framework for unexplained activity
analysis
Major breakthroughs

Capability to reason about zero-day vulnerabilities and efficiently
assess the risk associated with such vulnerabilities without generating the
entire attack graph
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview of Contribution – Year 5
10

Technical accomplishments





A suite of metrics for measuring network-wide cyber security risk
based on attack graphs
An approach to model network diversity as a security metric for
evaluating the robustness of networks against zero-day attacks
An analysis of how situational awareness forms and evolves
during the several stages of the cyber defense process
An analysis of how automated CSA tools can be used for
improving analyst performance
Major breakthroughs

Capability of quantifying risk and resiliency using several
metrics
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Quad Chart - Year 5
11
Objectives:
Improve Cyber Situation Awareness via
• Metrics for measuring network-wide cyber security risk
• An better understanding of the impact of network diversity on the
robustness of networks against zero-day attacks
• A better understanding of how situational awareness forms and evolves
• A better understanding of how automated CSA tools can improve analyst
performance
DoD Benefit:
• Ability to quantitatively evaluate network-wide security risks
• Ability to better design automated CSA tools that can effectively reduce
the workload for the analysts and improve their performance
Scientific/Technical Approach
• Defining a hierarchy of attack graph based metrics, and developing
metrics
• Studying diversity as a network-wide metrics to asses resilience against
zero-day attacks, and defining several diversity-based metrics:
biodiversity inspired, least attacking effort, and average attacking effort
• Studying situational awareness capabilities from a functional point of
view, and identifying inputs, outputs, and lifecycle of the derived
awareness
• Examining the impact of automated tools on analyst performance
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
Major Accomplishments
• Defined a suite of metrics for measuring network-wide cyber
security risk based on a model of multi-step attack vulnerability
(attack graph)
• Modeled network diversity as a security metric for evaluating the
robustness of networks against zero-day attacks
• Studied how situational awareness forms and evolves during the
several stages of the cyber defense process, and how automated
CSA tools can be used for improving analyst performance
Challenges
• Defining solid metrics that accurately capture risk and resilience
November 18-19, 2014
12
Year 5 Statistics
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Year 5 Statistics (1/2)
13

Publications & presentations




3 papers published in peer-reviewed conference proceedings
1 paper published in a peer-reviewed journal
2 book chapters
1 book


L. Wang, M. Albanese, and S. Jajodia, “Network Hardening: An
Automated Approach to Improving Network Security,” ISBN 978-3319-04611-2, SpringerBriefs in Computer Science, 2014, 60 pages
Supported personnel



2 faculty
1 doctoral student
1 undergraduate student
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Year 5 Statistics (2/2)
14

Patents Awarded during the reporting period



Patents Disclosed during the reporting period


Sushil Jajodia, Lingyu Wang, and Anoop Singhal, “Interactive
Analysis of Attack Graphs Using Relational Queries”, United States
Patent No. 8,566,269 B2, October 22, 2013.
Steven Noel, Sushil Jajodia, and Eric Robertson, “Intrusion Event
Correlation System”, United States Patent No. 8,719,943 B2,
May 6, 2014.
Massimiliano Albanese, Sushil Jajodia, and Steven Noel, “Methods
and Systems for Determining Hardening Strategies”, United States
Patent Application No. US 2014/0173740 A1, June 19, 2014.
Honors & Awards

Max Albanese received the 2014 Mason Emerging
Researcher/Scholar/Creator Award
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
15
Metrics: Measuring Security Risk
Steven Noel and Sushil Jajodia, “Metrics suite for
network attack graph analytics,” Proceedings of the 9th
Cyber and Information Security Research Conference
(CISR 2014), Oak Ridge, TN, USA, April 8-10, 2014
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview
16

Attack (vulnerability dependency) graphs
 Combine
information about topology, policy, and
vulnerabilities

 Identify
network vulnerability paths
 Provide
qualitative rather than quantitative insights
Attack graph metrics
 Capture
 Enable
 Look
trends over time
comparisons across organizations
at complementary dimensions of security
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Cauldron Attack Graph
17
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph Metrics
18
Network Topology
Attack Graph
Analysis
XML
CSV
Graphical
Metrics
Engine
Firewall Rules
Cisco ASA
Cisco IOS
Juniper JUNOS
Juniper ScreenOS
…
Nessus
Retina
nCircle
nmap
…
Host Vulnerabilities
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
Metrics
Dashboard
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph Metrics Families
19

Victimization: Individual vulnerabilities and exposed services
each have elements of risk


Size: The size of attack graphs is a prime indication of risk


The larger the graph, the more ways to be compromised
Containment: Networks are generally administered in pieces
(subnets, domains, etc.)


We score the entire network across individual vulnerability
victimization dimensions
Risk mitigation should aim to reduce attacks across such boundaries
Topology: The connectivity, cycles, and depth of the attack
graph indicate how graph relationships enable network
penetration
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Metrics Hierarchy
20
Network
Score
Metrics
Family
Victimization
Existence
Individual
Metrics
Exploitability
Overall
Size
Containment
Topology
Vectors
Vectors
Connectivity
Machines
Machines
Cycles
Vuln Types
Depth
Impact
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Victimization Metrics
21

Existence – relative number of ports that are
vulnerable (on a 0 to 10 scale)
Existence  10 

sv
sv  s n
Exploitability – average CVSS Exploitability
Exploitability  i 1 eui  U
U

Impact – average CVSS Impact
Impact  i 1 mui  U ,
U
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Size Family: Vectors Metric
22
Across domains:
explicit vectors
vi , j
Within domain (implicit vectors)
mi  1mj v j
i
Attack vectorsva  i mi  1 j i v j  i , j vi , j
d
m
d
Total possible attack vec tors v p  m  1i si
m
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
va
Vectors Size  10 
v
November 18-19, 2014 p
Size Family: Machines Metric
23
Non-vulnerable machines
m   j 1 m j
d
Vulnerable machines
r  i 1 ri
d
r
Machines Size  10
rm
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Containment Family: Vectors Metric
24
Across domains:
explicit vectors
vi , j
Within domain (implicit vectors)
mi  1mj v j
i
Attack vectorsva  i mi  1 j i v j  i , j vi , j
d
m
d
Attack vectors across domains vc  i , j vi , j
d
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
vc
November 18-19, 2014 va
Vectors Containment  10 
Containment Family: Machines Metric
25
Victims
within domain only
d
mw  i mi m, mi  V 
Victims across domains
ma  i mi m, mi  V 
d
Machines Containment  10 
ma
ma  mw
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Containment Family: Vulnerability Types
26
Vulnerability types
within domain only
tw  i ti mi  m, ti mi  V 
d
Vulnerability types
across domains
ta  i ti mi  m, ti mi  V 
d
ta
Vuln Types Containment  10 
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness ReviewtMeeting
a  tw
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph Connectivity
27
Motivation: Better to have attack graph as
disconnected parts versus connected whole
One
Component
Two
Components
Less
Secure
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
Three
Components
More
Secure
November 18-19, 2014
Topology Family: Connectivity Metric
28
 w 1 
Metric  101 

d

1


1 component
4 components
5 components
1 1 

Metric 101 
  10
11

1


4 1 

Metric 101 
7
11

1


5 1 

Metric 101 
6
11

1


ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph Cycles
29
Motivation: For a connected attack graph,
better to avoid cycles among subgraphs
More
Secure
Less
Secure
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Topology Family: Cycles Metric
30
 s 1 
Metric  101 

d

1


4 components
5 components
10 components
4 1 

Metric 101 
7
11

1


5 1 

Metric 101 
6
11

1


 10  1 
Metric 101 
 1
11

1


ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph Depth
31
Motivation: Better to have attack graph
deeper versus shallower
One Step
Deep
2 Steps
Deep
Less
Secure
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
3 Steps
Deep
More
Secure
November 18-19, 2014
Topology Family: Depth Metric
32
10
Metric 
nd

si 


c

1


i 
c

1
i 1
i


n
Shortest path 3/8
Shortest path 4/8
3 

Metric 101 
  5.7
 8 1 
4 

Metric 101 
  4.3
8

1


ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
Shortest paths 2/3 and 1/5
Metric
10  
2 
1 

3

1


5

1




  2.3
2  8   3  1 
 5  1 
November 18-19, 2014
Metrics Dashboard
33
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Trend Summary
34
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Example Network Topology
35
Partner
Domains
DMZ
Internal
Domains
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph – Before Hardening
36
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Attack Graph – After Hardening
37
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
38
Metrics: Network Diversity
L. Wang, M. Zhang, S. Jajodia, A. Singhal, and M. Albanese,
“Modeling Network Diversity for Evaluating the Robustness
of Networks against Zero-Day Attacks,” Proceedings of the
19th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security
(ESORICS 2012), Wroclaw, Poland, September 7-11, 2014
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview
39


Zero-day attacks are a real threat to mission critical
networks
Governments and cybercriminals are stockpiling
zero-day vulnerabilities1
 The
NSA spent more than $25 million a year to acquire
software vulnerabilities
 Example. Stuxnet exploits 4 different/complementary
zero day vulnerabilities to infiltrate a SCADA network

But what can we do about unknown attacks?
1 http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/12/how-many-zero-days-hit-you-today/
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
How Could Diversity Help?
40

Stuxnet’s attack strategy
party (e.g., contractor)  organization’s network 
machine with Siemens Step 7  PLC
 3rd

The degree of software diversity along potential
attack paths can be considered a good metric for
the network’s capability of resisting Stuxnet
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Existing Work on Diversity
41

Software diversity has long been regarded as a
security mechanism for improving robustness
 The
degree of diversity along potential attack paths is an
indicator of the network’s capability of resisting attacks
 Tolerating attacks as Byzantine faults by comparing
outputs or behaviors of diverse variants

Limitations: At a higher abstraction level, as a
global property of an entire network, network
diversity and its impact on security has not been
formally modeled
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Our Contribution
42

We take the first step towards formally modeling
network diversity as a security metric
We propose a network diversity function based on well
known mathematical models of biodiversity in ecology
 We design a network diversity metric based on the least
attacking effort
 We design a probabilistic network diversity metric to reflect
the average attacking effort
 We evaluate the metrics and algorithms through simulation


The modeling effort helps understand diversity and
enables quantitative hardening approaches
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Bio-Diversity and Richness of Species
43


Literature on biodiversity confirms a positive relationship between
biodiversity and the ecosystem’s resistance to invasion and diseases
Richness of species



Effective number or resources



The number of different species in an ecosystem
Limitation: ignores the relative abundance of each species
Measures the equivalent number of equally-common species, even if in
reality all species are not equally common
Limitation: assumes all resources are equally different
Similarity-Sensitive Effective Richness

We can use a resource similarity function to account for differences
between resources
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Resource Graph
44




Syntactically equivalent to an attack graph
Models causal relationships between
network resources (rather than
vulnerabilities)
Vertices: zero-day exploits,
their pre- and post-conditions
Edges: AND between
pre-conditions, OR between exploits

On which path should we compute the
diversity metrics?
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Selecting the Least Diverse Path(s)
45

Intuitively, it should be the “shortest” path
1
or 2 have the minimum number of steps, but 4 may
take less effort than 1!
 2 or 4 have the minimum number of resources? But they
both have 2 resources, so which one is better?
 4 minimizes #resources/#steps? But what if there is a
path with 9 steps and 3 resources? 1/3<2/4, but it
clearly does not represent the least attack effort!
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Network Diversity in Least Attack Effort
46

We define network diversity as:

𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 # 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑡ℎ
𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 # 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑝𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑡ℎ

Note: These may or may not be the same path!


In this case: 2 (path 2, 4) / 3 (path 1, 2)
Determining the network diversity is NP-hard

Our heuristic algorithm only keeps a limited number of local optima
at each step
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Network Diversity in Average Effort


The least attacking effort-based metric only provides
a partial picture of the threat
We now define a probabilistic network diversity
metric based on the average attacking effort

Defined as
𝑝1
,
𝑝2
where

𝑝1 is the probability an attacker can compromise a given asset
now, and

𝑝2 is the probability he/she can still compromise it if all the
resources were to be made different (i.e., every resource type
would appear at most once)
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
47
Simulation Results
Accuracy and Performance
48
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
49
Lifecycle of Situational Awareness
M. Albanese and S. Jajodia, “Formation of
Awareness,” to appear in Cyber Defense and Situational
Awareness, A. Kott, R. Erbacher, C. Wang, eds., Springer
Advances in Information Security, 2014.
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Cyber Defense Process at a Glance
50

The overall process of cyber defense relies on the combined
knowledge of actual attacks and effective defenses
 It ideally involves every part of the ecosystem


It also entails the participation of individuals in every role within the
organization


The enterprise, its employees and customers, and other stakeholders
Threat responders, security analysts, technologists, tool developers, users,
policymakers, auditors, etc.
Defensive actions are not limited to preventing the initial compromise
 They also address detection of already-compromised machines
and prevention or disruption of attackers’ subsequent actions
 The defenses identified deal with reducing the initial attack
surface

Hardening device configurations, addressing long-term threats (such as
APTs), disrupting attackers’ command-and-control of implanted malicious
code, and establishing an adaptive defense and response capability
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Cyber Defense Critical Functions
51

Learning from attacks


Prioritization


Establishing common metrics to provide a shared language for all parties
involved to measure the effectiveness of security controls
Continuous diagnostics and mitigation


Prioritizing controls that will provide the greatest risk reduction and protection
against current and future threats
Metrics


Using knowledge of actual attacks that have compromised a system to provide
the foundation to learn from these events and build effective, practical defenses
Carrying out continuous measurement to test and validate the effectiveness of
current security controls, and to help drive the prioritization of the next steps
Automation

Automating defenses so that organizations can achieve reliable, scalable, and
continuous monitoring of security relevant events and variables
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Cyber Defense Roles
52

Security Analyst


Security Engineer


Responsible for designing a security system or its major components
Security Administrator


Responsible for performing security monitoring, detecting security
incidents, and initiating incident response
Security Architect


Responsible for analyzing and assessing existing vulnerabilities in the IT
infrastructure, and investigating available tools and countermeasures
Responsible for managing organization-wide security systems
Security consultant/specialist

Responsible for different task related to protecting computers, networks,
software, data, and/or information systems against cyber threats
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Questions
53
Current situation. Is
there any ongoing
attack? If yes, where is
the attacker?
Impact. How is the attack
impacting the enterprise
or mission? Can we asses
the damage?
Evolution. How is the
situation evolving? Can
we track all the steps of
an attack?
Web Server (A)
Catalog Server (E)
DB Server (G)
Behavior. How are the
attackers expected to
behave? What are their
strategies?
Forensics. How did the
attacker create the
current situation? What
was he trying to achieve?
Prediction. Can we
predict plausible futures
of the current situation?
Local DB Server (B)
Internet
Mobile App Server (C)
Order Processing Server (F)
Local DB Server (D)
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
Information. What
information sources can
we rely upon? Can we
assess their quality?
Scalability. How can we
ensure that solutions scale
well for large networks?
November 18-19, 2014
1 – Current Situation
54
Is there any ongoing attack? If yes, what is the stage of the
intrusion and where is the attacker?
 Capability


Input


IDS logs, firewall logs, and data from other security monitoring
tools
Output


Effectively detecting ongoing intrusions, and identifying the assets
that might have been compromised already
A detailed mapping of current intrusive activities
Lifecycle

This type of SA may quickly become obsolete – if not updated
frequently – as the intruder progresses within the system
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
2 – Impact
55
How is the attack impacting the organization or mission?
Can we assess the damage?
 Capability


Input


Knowledge of the organization’s assets along with some measure
of each asset’s value
Output


Accurately assessing the impact (so far) of ongoing attacks
An estimate of the damage caused so far by the intrusive activity
Lifecycle

This type of SA must be frequently updated to remain useful, as
damage will increase as the attack progresses
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
3 – Evolution
56
How is the situation evolving? Can we track all the steps of
an attack?
 Capability


Input


Situational awareness generated in response to the questions 1 &2
Output


Monitoring ongoing attacks, once such attacks have been detected
A detailed understanding of how the attack is progressing
Lifecycle

This capability can help address the limitations on the useful life of
the situational awareness generated in response to questions 1 & 2
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
4 – Behavior
57
How are the attackers expected to behave? What are their
strategies?
 Capability


Input


Past observations and knowledge of organization’s assets
Output


Modeling the attacker’s behavior in order to understand its goals
and strategies
A set of formal models (e.g., game theoretic, stochastic) of the
attacker’s behavior
Lifecycle

The attacker’s behavior may change over time, therefore models
need to adapt to a changing adversarial landscape
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
5 – Forensics
58
How did the attacker create the current situation? What was
he trying to achieve?
 Capability


Input


Situational awareness gained is response to question 4
Output


Analyzing the logs after the fact and correlating observations in
order to understand how an attack originated and evolved
A detailed understanding of the weaknesses and vulnerabilities
that made the attack possible
Lifecycle

This information can help security engineers and administrators
harden system configurations to prevent similar incidents from
happening again
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
6 – Prediction
59
Can we predict plausible futures of the current situation?
 Capability
 Predicting possible moves an attacker may take in the future
 Input
 Situational awareness gained in response to questions 1, 3,
and 4
 Output
 A set of possible alternative scenarios that may realize in
the future
 Lifecycle

This type of SA may quickly become obsolete
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
7 – Quality of Information
60
What information sources can we rely upon? Can we
assess their quality?
 Capability


Input


Information sources
Output


Assessing the quality of the information sources all other
tasks depend upon
A detailed understanding of how to weight different sources
when processing information in response to other questions
Lifecycle

Needs to be updated when the information sources change
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
61
Impact of SA on Analyst Performance
M. Albanese, H. Cam, and S. Jajodia, “Automated
Cyber Situation Awareness Tools for Improving
Analyst Performance,” Cybersecurity Systems for
Human Cognition Augmentation, Springer 2014.
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Overview
62



Automated Cyber Situation Awareness tools and models can
enhance performance, cognition and understanding for cyber
professionals monitoring complex cyber systems
In most current solutions, human analysts are heavily involved
in every phase of the monitoring and response process
Ideally, we should move from a human-in-the loop scenario
to a human-on-the loop scenario


Human analysts should have the responsibility to oversee the
automated processes and validate the results of automated
analysis of monitoring data
To this aim, it is highly desirable to have temporal models such as
Petri nets to model and integrate the concurrent operations of
cyber-physical systems with the cognitive processing of analyst
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Petri Net Models for SA
63
P1: Firewall receives packets
P2: Sensor’s measurements are collected
P3: Vulnerability scanner scans
P4: Recovery tools run
P5: Reject firewall rule-matched packets
P6: Pass rule-nonmatched packets
P7: Attackability conditions of system
P8: Vulnerabilities exist
P9: Active malicious codes
P10: Assets compromised
P11: Impact of assets damages
P12: Assets recovered partially
P13: Available assets
P14: Analyst observes events
P15: Analyst considers potential actions
P16: Analyst determines impact of actions
Integrating Cybersecurity Operations with Cognitive Analytical
Reasoning of Analysts
P1
T1
deny
P5
P2
P3
T2
T3
pass
P8
P7
P6
P4
T4
T5
P9
T6
P10
T8
T10
T1: Apply firewall ruleset against packets
T2: Alarm probability exceeds threshold
T3: Find new vulnerabilities
T4: Activated malicious packets
14
T5: Intrusion attempts
T6: Propagate impact of damages
T7: Patch vulnerabilities, and recover damages
T8: Evict compromised non-recoverable assets
12
T9: Recover assets fully
T10: Analyst creates a hypothesis
T11: Analyst takes an action to verify his/her hypothesis
T12: Analyst determines the difference (error) between actual impact
and his/her intended impact of action
P
P15
P11
T7
P12
T9
P13
T11
T
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
P16
November 18-19, 2014
64
Conclusions
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
Conclusions
65

The focus in Year 5 was on
integration of previous contributions
 refinement of the CSA framework


definition of metrics



attack graph based
diversity based
better understanding the overall process
lifecycle of CSA
 role of the analyst


Some of these capabilities will be further refined in a
side project
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014
66
Questions?
ARO-MURI on Cyber-Situation Awareness Review Meeting
November 18-19, 2014