Fluent Essays

In todays world, both government and the private sector are struggling to provide a secure, efficient, timely, and separate means of delivering essential services internationally. As a result, these critical national infrastructure systems remain at risk from potential attacks via the Internet.It is the policy of the United States to prevent or minimize disruptions to the critical national information infrastructure in order to protect the public, the economy, government services, and the national security of the United States.The Federal Government is continually increasing capabilities to address cyber risk associated with critical networks and information systems.Please explain how you would reduce potential vulnerabilities, protect against intrusion attempts, and better anticipate future threats. emerging_threats_and_countermeasures.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Cyber Attacks “Dr. Amoroso’s fifth book Cyber Attacks: Protecting National Infrastructure outlines the challenges of protecting our nation’s infrastructure from cyber attack using security techniques established to protect much smaller and less complex environments. He proposes a brand new type of national infrastructure protection methodology and outlines a strategy presented as a series of ten basic design and operations principles ranging from deception to response. The bulk of the text covers each of these principles in technical detail. While several of these principles would be daunting to implement and practice they provide the first clear and concise framework for discussion of this critical challenge. This text is thought-provoking and should be a ‘must read’ for anyone concerned with cybersecurity in the private or government sector.” —Clayton W. Naeve, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Endowed Chair in Bioinformatics, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN “Dr. Ed Amoroso reveals in plain English the threats and weaknesses of our critical infrastructure balanced against practices that reduce the exposures. This is an excellent guide to the understanding of the cyber-scape that the security professional navigates. The book takes complex concepts of security and simplifies it into coherent and simple to understand concepts.” —Arnold Felberbaum, Chief IT Security & Compliance Officer, Reed Elsevier “The national infrastructure, which is now vital to communication, commerce and entertainment in everyday life, is highly vulnerable to malicious attacks and terrorist threats. Today, it is possible for botnets to penetrate millions of computers around the world in few minutes, and to attack the valuable national infrastructure. “As the New York Times reported, the growing number of threats by botnets suggests that this cyber security issue has become a serious problem, and we are losing the war against these attacks. “While computer security technologies will be useful for network systems, the reality tells us that this conventional approach is not effective enough for the complex, large-scale national infrastructure. “Not only does the author provide comprehensive methodologies based on 25 years of experience in cyber security at AT&T, but he also suggests ‘security through obscurity,’ which attempts to use secrecy to provide security.” —Byeong Gi Lee, President, IEEE Communications Society, and Commissioner of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) Cyber Attacks Protecting National Infrastructure Edward G. Amoroso AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS • SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier Acquiring Editor: Pam Chester Development Editor: Gregory Chalson Project Manager: Paul Gottehrer Designer: Alisa Andreola Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier 30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods or professional practices, may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information or methods described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Amoroso, Edward G. Cyber attacks : protecting national infrastructure / Edward Amoroso. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-12-384917-5 1. Cyberterrorism—United States—Prevention. 2. Computer security—United States. 3. National security—United States. I. Title. HV6773.2.A47 2011 363.325⬘90046780973—dc22 2010040626 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States of America 10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For information on all BH publications visit our website at www.elsevierdirect.com/security CONTENTS CONTENTS Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Acknowledgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Chapter 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 National Cyber Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Botnet Threat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 National Cyber Security Methodology Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Deception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Discretion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Implementing the Principles Nationally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Chapter 2 Deception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Scanning Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deliberately Open Ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discovery Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deceptive Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exploitation Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Procurement Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exposing Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interfaces Between Humans and Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Deception Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 37 39 41 42 45 46 47 49 v vi CONTENTS Chapter 3 Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 What Is Separation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Functional Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Infrastructure Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DDOS Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SCADA Separation Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Physical Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Insider Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Asset Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multilevel Security (MLS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 55 57 60 62 63 65 68 70 Chapter 4 Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Diversity and Worm Propagation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Desktop Computer System Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Diversity Paradox of Cloud Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network Technology Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Physical Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Diversity Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 77 80 82 85 87 Chapter 5 Commonality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Meaningful Best Practices for Infrastructure Protection. . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Locally Relevant and Appropriate Security Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Culture of Security Protection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Infrastructure Simplification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Certification and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Career Path and Reward Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Responsible Past Security Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 National Commonality Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Chapter 6 Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Effectiveness of Depth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Layered Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 Layered E-Mail Virus and Spam Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 CONTENTS Layered Access Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Layered Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Layered Intrusion Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Program of Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii 120 122 124 126 Chapter 7 Discretion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Trusted Computing Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Security Through Obscurity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Information Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Information Reconnaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Obscurity Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Organizational Compartments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Discretion Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 133 135 137 139 141 143 Chapter 8 Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Collecting Network Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collecting System Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Security Information and Event Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Large-Scale Trending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tracking a Worm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Collection Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 150 154 156 159 161 Chapter 9 Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Conventional Security Correlation Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quality and Reliability Issues in Data Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Correlating Data to Detect a Worm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Correlating Data to Detect a Botnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Large-Scale Correlation Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Correlation Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 169 170 172 174 176 Chapter 10 Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Detecting Infrastructure Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Managing Vulnerability Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 viii CONTENTS Cyber Security Intelligence Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Risk Management Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Security Operations Centers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Awareness Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 188 190 192 Chapter 11 Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Pre- Versus Post-Attack Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indications and Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Incident Response Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forensic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Law Enforcement Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disaster Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Response Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 197 198 201 203 204 206 Appendix Sample National Infrastructure Protection Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Sample Deception Requirements (Chapter 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Sample Separation Requirements (Chapter 3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Sample Diversity Requirements (Chapter 4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 Sample Commonality Requirements (Chapter 5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Sample Depth Requirements (Chapter 6) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Sample Discretion Requirements (Chapter 7) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Sample Collection Requirements (Chapter 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Sample Correlation Requirements (Chapter 9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Sample Awareness Requirements (Chapter 10) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Sample Response Requirements (Chapter 11) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 PREFACE PREFACE Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. Thomas Paine in Common Sense Before you invest any of your time with this book, please take a moment and look over the following points. They outline my basic philosophy of national infrastructure security. I think that your reaction to these points will give you a pretty good idea of what your reaction will be to the book. 1. Citizens of free nations cannot hope to express or enjoy their freedoms if basic security protections are not provided. Security does not suppress freedom—it makes freedom possible. 2. In virtually every modern nation, computers and networks power critical infrastructure elements. As a result, cyber attackers can use computers and networks to damage or ruin the infrastructures that citizens rely on. 3. Security protections, such as those in security books, were designed for small-scale environments such as enterprise computing environments. These protections do not extrapolate to the protection of massively complex infrastructure. 4. Effective national cyber protections will be driven largely by cooperation and coordination between commercial, industrial, and government organizations. Thus, organizational management issues will be as important to national defense as technical issues. 5. Security is a process of risk reduction, not risk removal. Therefore, concrete steps can and should be taken to reduce, but not remove, the risk of cyber attack to national infrastructure. 6. The current risk of catastrophic cyber attack to national infrastructure must be viewed as extremely high, by any realistic measure. Taking little or no action to reduce this risk would be a foolish national decision. The chapters of this book are organized around ten basic principles that will reduce the risk of cyber attack to national infrastructure in a substantive manner. They are driven by ix x PREFACE experiences gained managing the security of one of the largest, most complex infrastructures in the world, by years of learning from various commercial and government organizations, and by years of interaction with students and academic researchers in the security field. They are also driven by personal experiences dealing with a wide range of successful and unsuccessful cyber attacks, including ones directed at infrastructure of considerable value. The implementation of the ten principles in this book will require national resolve and changes to the way computing and networking elements are designed, built, and operated in the context of national infrastructure. My hope is that the suggestions offered in these pages will make this process easier. ACKNOWLEDGMENT ACKNOWLEDGMENT The cyber security experts in the AT&T Chief Security Office, my colleagues across AT&T Labs and the AT&T Chief Technology Office, my colleagues across the entire AT&T business, and my graduate and undergraduate students in the Computer Science Department at the Stevens Institute of Technology, have had a profound impact on my thinking and on the contents of this book. In addition, many prominent enterprise customers of AT&T with whom I’ve had the pleasure of serving, especially those in the United States Federal Government, have been great influencers in the preparation of this material. I’d also like to extend a great thanks to my wife Lee, daughter Stephanie (17), son Matthew (15), and daughter Alicia (9) for their collective patience with my busy schedule. Edward G. Amoroso ... Purchase answer to see full attachment