Evaluating Software Sensors for Actively Profiling Windows 2000 Computer Users

We report on a new, on-going intrusion-detection project that empirically investigates the usefulness of "stealing" a small amount of CPU cycles (1%), main memory (16MB), and disk memory (100 MB) in order to continually gather and analyze dozens of fine-grained system measurements, such as network traffic, identity of the current programs executing, and the user’s typing speed. The underlying scientific hypothesis is that a properly chosen set of measurements can provide a "fingerprint" that is unique to each user. Hence, such measurements could serve to help distinguish appropriate use of a given computer from misuse, especially by insiders.