Today’s computer systems face sophisticated attackers who combine multiple vulnerabilities to penetrate networks with devastating impact. The overall security of a network cannot be determined by simply counting the number of vulnerabilities. To accurately assess the security of networked systems, one must understand how vulnerabilities can be combined to stage an attack. We model such composition of vulnerabilities through attack graphs. By simulating incremental network penetration, and propagating attack likelihoods, we measure the overall security of a networked system. From this, we score risk mitigation options in terms of maximizing security and minimizing cost. We populate our attack graph models from live network scans and databases that have knowledge about properties such as vulnerability likelihood, impact, severity, and ease of exploitation. Our exible model can be used to quantify overall security of networked systems, and to study cost/benet tradeos for analyzing return on security investment.
[1]
Sushil Jajodia,et al.
Measuring the Overall Security of Network Configurations Using Attack Graphs
,
2007,
DBSec.
[2]
Sushil Jajodia,et al.
Topological Vulnerability Analysis
,
2010,
Cyber Situational Awareness.
[3]
Andrew Jaquith.
Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
,
2007
.
[4]
Sushil Jajodia,et al.
A weakest-adversary security metric for network configuration security analysis
,
2006,
QoP '06.
[5]
Sushil Jajodia,et al.
Managing attack graph complexity through visual hierarchical aggregation
,
2004,
VizSEC/DMSEC '04.
[6]
Marianne Swanson,et al.
Security metrics guide for information technology systems
,
2003
.