Protecting Secret Data from Insider Attacks
We consider defenses against confidentiality and integrity attacks on data following break-ins, or so-called intrusion resistant storage technologies. We investigate the problem of protecting secret data, assuming an attacker is inside a target network or has compromised a system. 
 
We give a definition of the problem area, and propose a solution, VAST, that uses large, structured files to improve the secure storage of valuable or secret data. Each secret has its multiple shares randomly distributed in an extremely large file. Random decoy shares and the lack of usable identification information prevent selective copying or analysis of the file. No single part of the file yields useful information in isolation from the rest. The file’s size and structure therefore present an enormous additional hurdle to attackers attempting to transfer, steal or analyze the data. The system also has the remarkable property of healing itself after malicious corruption, thereby preserving both the confidentiality and integrity of the data.

title: Anomaly detection using call stack information
abstract: The call stack of a program execution can be a very good information source for intrusion detection. There is no prior work on dynamically extracting information from the call stack and effectively using it to detect exploits. In this paper we propose a new method to do anomaly detection using call stack information. The basic idea is to extract return addresses from the call stack, and generate an abstract execution path between two program execution points. Experiments show that our method can detect some attacks that cannot be detected by other approaches, while its convergence and false positive performance is comparable to or better than the other approaches. We compare our method with other approaches by analyzing their underlying principles and thus achieve a better characterization of their performance, in particular on what and why attacks will be missed by the various approaches.

title: Statistical Causality Analysis of INFOSEC Alert Data
abstract: With the increasingly widespread deployment of security mechanisms, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDSs), antiviras software and authentication services, the problem of alert analysis has become very important. The large amount of alerts can overwhelm security administrators and prevent them from adequately understanding and analyzing the security state of the network, and initiating appropriate response in a timely fashion. Recently, several approaches for alert correlation and attack scenario analysis have been proposed. However, these approaches all have limited capabilities in detecting new attack scenarios. In this paper, we study the problem of security alert correlation with an emphasis on attack scenario analysis. In our framework, we use clustering techniques to process low-level alert data into high-level aggregated alerts, and conduct causal analysis based on statistical tests to discover new relationships among attacks. Our statistical causality approach complements other approaches that use hard-coded prior knowledge for pattern matching. We perform a series of experiments to validate our method using DARPA’s Grand Challenge Problem (GCP) datasets, the 2000 DARPA Intrusion Detection Scenario datasets, and the DEF CON 9 datasets. The results show that our approach can discover new patterns of attack relationships when the alerts of attacks are statistically correlated.

title: Worm detection, early warning and response based on local victim information
abstract: Worm detection systems have traditionally focused on global strategies. In the absence of a global worm detection system, we examine the effectiveness of local worm detection and response strategies. This paper makes three contributions: (1) we propose a simple two-phase local worm victim detection algorithm, DSC (Destination-Source Correlation), based on worm behavior in terms of both infection pattern and scanning pattern. DSC can detect zero-day scanning worms with a high detection rate and very low false positive rate. (2) We demonstrate the effectiveness of early worm warning based on local victim information. For example, warning occurs with 0.19% infection of all vulnerable hosts on Internet when using a /12 monitored network. (3) Based on local victim information, we investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of an automatic real-time local response in terms of slowing down the global Internet worms propagation. (2) and (3) are general results, not specific to certain detection algorithm like DSC. We demonstrate (2) and (3) with both analytical models and packet-level network simulator experiments.

title: Using Labeling to Prevent Cross-Service Attacks Against Smart Phones
abstract: Wireless devices that integrate the functionality of PDAs and cell phones are becoming commonplace, making different types of network services available to mobile applications. However, the integration of different services allows an attacker to cross service boundaries. For example, an attack carried out through the wireless network interface may eventually provide access to the phone functionality. This type of attacks can cause considerable damage because some of the services (e.g., the GSM-based services) charge the user based on the traffic or time of use. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of these attacks by developing a proof-of-concept exploit that crosses service boundaries. To address these security issues, we developed a solution based on resource labeling. We modified the kernel of an integrated wireless device so that processes and files are marked in a way that allows one to regulate the access to different system resources. Labels are set when certain network services are accessed. The labeling is then transferred between processes and system resources as a result of either access or execution. We also defined a language for creating labeling rules, and demonstrated how the system can be used to prevent attacks that attempt to cross service boundaries. Experimental evaluation shows that the implementation introduces little overhead. Our security solution is orthogonal to other protection schemes and provides a critical defense for the growing problem of cell phone viruses and worms

title: A framework for constructing features and models for intrusion detection systems
abstract: Intrusion detection (ID) is an important component of infrastructure protection mechanisms. Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) need to be accurate, adaptive, and extensible. Given these requirements and the complexities of today's network environments, we need a more systematic and automated IDS development process rather that the pure knowledge encoding and engineering approaches. This article describes a novel framework, MADAM ID, for Mining Audit Data for Automated Models for Instrusion Detection. This framework uses data mining algorithms to compute activity patterns from system audit data and extracts predictive features from the patterns. It then applies machine learning algorithms to the audit records taht are processed according to the feature definitions to generate intrusion detection rules.  Evaluation showed that our ID model was one of the best performing of all the participating systems. We also briefly discuss our experience in converting the detection models produced by off-line data mining programs to real-time modules of existing IDSs.

title: An End-to-end Workflow Pipeline for Large-scale Grid Computing
abstract: In this paper we describe a service-based, software architecture that enables end-to-end, high-level workflow processing in a Grid environment consisting of many heterogeneous resources. Our architecture is essentially a pipeline that extends from the abstract application specification phase to the deployment and execution stages through to returning the results to the user. We envision a large-scale Grid environment that contains heterogeneous resources. Our architecture caters for flexible deployment, performance, reliability and charging for resource usage. These are addressed at the specification level as well as at the realisation (brokering) and execution levels. The proposed architecture is derived from previous work in LeSC that has produced the ICENI pipeline, and our experience with e-Science projects, such as GENIE, e-Protein and RealityGrid from which we derive a set of key requirements.

title: RankCut - A Domain Independent Forward Pruning Method for Games
abstract: Forward pruning, also known as selective search, is now employed in many strong game-playing programs. In this paper, we introduce RankCut – a domain independent forward pruning technique which makes use of move ordering, and prunes once no better move is likely to be available. Since gameplaying programs already perform move ordering to improve the performance of αβ search, this information is available at no extra cost. As RankCut uses additional information untapped by current forward pruning techniques, RankCut is a complementary forward pruning method that can be used with existing methods, and is able to achieve improvements even when conventional pruning techniques are simultaneously employed. We implemented RankCut in a modern open-source chess program, CRAFTY. RankCut reduces the game-tree size by approximately 10%-40% for search depths 8-12 while retaining tactical reliability, when implemented alongside CRAFTY’s existing forward pruning techniques.

title: Proactive caching for spatial queries in mobile environments
abstract: Semantic caching enables mobile clients to answer spatial queries locally by storing the query descriptions together with the results. However, it supports only a limited number of query types, and sharing results among these types is difficult. To address these issues, we propose a proactive caching model which caches the result objects as well as the index that supports these objects as the results. The cached index enables the objects to be reused for all common types of queries. We also propose an adaptive scheme to cache such an index, which further optimizes the query response time for the best user experience. Simulation results show that proactive caching achieves a significant performance gain over page caching and semantic caching in mobile environments where wireless bandwidth and battery are precious resources.

title: Optimal channel allocation for data dissemination in mobile computing environments
abstract: We discuss the wireless channel allocation problem for data dissemination in mobile computing systems. Methods for accessing data through broadcast and on-demand channels are described. We provide analytical models and cost formulae for the exclusive broadcast channels and the exclusive on-demand channels and propose a dynamic channel allocation algorithm for optimizing system performance. Our performance evaluation shows that dynamic channel allocation significantly improves system performance and the channel allocation algorithm gives us the optimal solution for various system parameter settings.

title: Performance evaluation of a wireless hierarchical data dissemination system
abstract: Various techniques have been developed to improve the performance of wireless information services. Techniques such as information broadcasting, caching of frequently accessed data, and point-to-point channels for pull-based data requests are often used to reduce data access time. To efficiently utilize information broadcast, indexing and scheduling schemes are employed for the organization of data broadcast. Most of the studies in the literature focused either on individual technique or a combination of them with some restrictive assumptions. There is no study considering these techniques working together in an integrated manner. In this paper, we propose a dynamic data delivery model for wireless communication environments. An important feature of our model is that data are disseminated through various storage mediums according to the dynamically collected data access patterns. Various results are presented in a set of simulation studies, which give some of the intuitions behind the design of a wireless data delivery system.