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Scalable Security Model Generation and Analysis Using k-importance Measures

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Abstract

Attack representation models (ARMs) (such as attack graphs, attack trees) can be used to model and assess security of a networked system. To do this, one must generate an ARM. However, generation and evaluation of the ARM suffer from a scalability problem when the size of the networked system is very large (e.g., 10,000 computer hosts in the network with a complex network topology). The main reason is that computing all possible attack scenarios to cover all aspects of an attack results in a state space explosion. One idea is to use only important hosts and vulnerabilities in the networked system to generate and evaluate security. We propose to use k-importance measures to generate a two-layer hierarchical ARM that will improve the scalability of model generation and security evaluation computational complexities. We use k 1 number of important hosts based on network centrality measures and k 2 number of significant vulnerabilities of hosts using host security metrics. We show that an equivalent security analysis can be achieved using our approach (using k-importance measures), compared to an exhaustive search.

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© 2013 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Hong, J.B., Kim, D.S. (2013). Scalable Security Model Generation and Analysis Using k-importance Measures. In: Zia, T., Zomaya, A., Varadharajan, V., Mao, M. (eds) Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. SecureComm 2013. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 127. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04283-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04283-1_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04282-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04283-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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