Skip to main content

AlertVision: Visualizing Security Alerts

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Information Security Applications (WISA 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11402))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 669 Accesses

Abstract

Security is not just a technical problem, but it is a business problem. Companies are facing highly-sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks everyday, and losing a huge amount of money as well as private data. Threat intelligence helps in predicting and reacting to such problems, but extracting well-organized threat intelligence from enormous amount of information is significantly challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for visualizing security alerts, and implement it in a system that we call AlertVision, which provides an analyst with a visual summary about the correlation between security alerts. The visualization helps in understanding various threats in wild in an intuitive manner, and eventually benefits the analyst to build TI. We applied our technique on real-world data obtained from the network of 85 organizations, which include 5,801,619 security events in total, and summarized lessons learned.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Barnum, S.: Standardizing cyber threat intelligence information with the structured threat information expression (STIX™). Technical report, MITRE (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Cha, S.K., Moraru, I., Jang, J., Truelove, J., Brumley, D., Andersen, D.G.: SplitScreen: enabling efficient, distributed malware detection, pp. 377–390 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Coull, S., Branch, J., Szymanski, B., Breimer, E.: Intrusion detection: a bioinformatics approach. In: Proceedings of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, pp. 24–33 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cuppens, F., Ortalo, R.: LAMBDA: a language to model a database for detection of attacks. In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection, pp. 197–216 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Fenz, S., Ekelhart, A.: Formalizing information security knowledge. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Information, Computer, and Communications Security, pp. 183–194 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Forrest, S., Hofmeyr, S.A., Somayaji, A., Longstaff, T.A.: A sense of self for Unix processes. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 120–128 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Fruchterman, T.M.J., Reingold, E.M.: Graph drawing by force-directed placement. Softw.: Pract. Exp. 21(11), 1129–1164 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Gotoh, O.: An improved algorithm for matching biological sequences. J. Mol. Biol. 162(3), 705–708 (1982)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Gu, G., Perdisci, R., Zhang, J., Lee, W.: BotMiner: clustering analysis of network traffic for protocol- and structure-independent botnet detection. In: Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium, vol. 5, pp. 139–154 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Heoh, S.T., Ma, K.L., Wu, S.F., Zhao, X.: Case study: interactive visualization for internet security. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Visualization, pp. 505–508 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Huang, X., Miller, W.: A time-efficient, linear-space local similarity algorithm. Adv. Appl. Math. 12(3), 337–357 (1991)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. IBM: IBM X-Force threat intelligence. https://www.ibm.com/security/xforce

  13. Jouini, M., Rabai, L.B.A., Aissa, A.B.: Classification of security threats in information systems. Procedia Comput. Sci. 32, 489–496 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kapetanakis, S., Filippoupolitis, A., Loukas, G., Murayziq, T.S.A.: Profiling cyber attackers using case-based reasoning. In: Proceedings of the UK Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kirat, D., Vigna, G.: MalGene: automatic extraction of malware analysis evasion signature. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 769–780 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kotenko, I., Polubelova, O., Saenko, I., Doynikova, E.: The ontology of metrics for security evaluation and decision support in SIEM systems. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, pp. 638–645 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lee, K., Kim, J., Kwon, K.H., Han, Y., Kim, S.: DDoS attack detection method using cluster analysis. Expert Syst. Appl. 34(3), 1659–1665 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lee, W., Stolfo, S.J.: Data mining approaches for intrusion detection. In: Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium, pp. 79–93 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Livnat, Y., Agutter, J., Moon, S., Erbacher, R.F., Foresti, S.: A visualization paradigm for network intrusion detection. In: Proceedings of the Annual IEEE SMC Information Assurance Workshop, pp. 92–99 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Luh, R., Marschalek, S., Kaiser, M., Janicke, H., Schrittwieser, S.: Semantics-aware detection of targeted attacks: a survey. J. Comput. Virol. Hacking Tech. 13(1), 47–85 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Luh, R., Schrittwieser, S., Marschalek, S.: TAON: an ontology-based approach to mitigating targeted attacks. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications and Services, pp. 303–312 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  22. McPherson, J., Ma, K.L., Krystosk, P., Bartoletti, T., Christensen, M.: PortVis: a tool for port-based detection of security events. In: Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Visualization and Data Mining for Computer Security, pp. 73–81 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Mirheidari, S.A., Arshad, S., Jalili, R.: Alert correlation algorithms: a survey and taxonomy. In: Wang, G., Ray, I., Feng, D., Rajarajan, M. (eds.) CSS 2013. LNCS, vol. 8300, pp. 183–197. Springer, Cham (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03584-0_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Myers, E.W., Miller, W.: Optimal alignments in linear space. Bioinformatics 4(1), 11–17 (1988)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Needleman, S.B., Wunsch, C.D.: A general method applicable to the search for similarities in the amino acid sequence of two proteins. J. Mol. Biol. 48(3), 443–453 (1970)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Okada, D., Ino, F., Hagihara, K.: Accelerating the Smith-Waterman algorithm with interpair pruning and band optimization for the all-pairs comparison of base sequences. BMC Bioinform. 16(1), 321 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. O’Kane, P., Sezer, S., McLaughlin, K.: Obfuscation: the hidden malware. IEEE Secur. Priv. 9(5), 41–47 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. de Oliveira Sandes, E.F., de Melo, A.C.M.A.: Retrieving Smith-Waterman alignments with optimizations for megabase biological sequences using GPU. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 24(5), 1009–1021 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Qamar, S., Anwar, Z., Rahman, M.A., Al-Shaer, E., Chu, B.T.: Data-driven analytics for cyber-threat intelligence and information sharing. Comput. Secur. 67, 35–58 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Ramaki, A.A., Amini, M., Atani, R.E.: RTECA: real time episode correlation algorithm for multi-step attack scenarios detection. Comput. Secur. 49, 206–219 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Salah, S., Maciá-Fernández, G., DíAz-Verdejo, J.E.: A model-based survey of alert correlation techniques. Comput. Netw. 57(5), 1289–1317 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Shittu, R., Healing, A., Ghanea-Hercock, R., Bloomfield, R., Rajarajan, M.: Intrusion alert prioritisation and attack detection using post-correlation analysis. Comput. Secur. 50, 1–15 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Sibson, R.: SLINK: an optimally efficient algorithm for the single-link cluster method. Comput. J. 16(1), 30–34 (1973)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  34. Smith, T., Waterman, M.: Identification of common molecular subsequences. J. Mol. Biol. 147(1), 195–197 (1981)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Spring, J., Kern, S., Summers, A.: Global adversarial capability modeling. In: Proceedings of the IEEE eCrime Researchers Summit on Anti-phishing Working Group, pp. 1–21 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Strasburg, C., Basu, S., Wong, J.S.: S-MAIDS: a semantic model for automated tuning, correlation, and response selection in intrusion detection systems. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Software and Applications Conference, pp. 319–328 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Tankard, C.: Advanced persistent threats and how to monitor and deter them. Netw. Secur. 2011(8), 16–19 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Treinen, J.J., Thurimella, R.: A framework for the application of association rule mining in large intrusion detection infrastructures. In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection, pp. 1–18 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  39. de Vergara, J.E.L., Vázquez, E., Martin, A., Dubus, S., Lepareux, M.N.: Use of ontologies for the definition of alerts and policies in a network security platform. J. Netw. 4(8), 720–733 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Zhou, C.V., Leckie, C., Karunasekera, S.: A survey of coordinated attacks and collaborative intrusion detection. Comput. Secur. 29(1), 124–140 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. This research was supported by AhnLab.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sang Kil Cha .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Hong, J., Lee, J., Lee, H., Chang, Y., Choi, K., Cha, S.K. (2019). AlertVision: Visualizing Security Alerts. In: Kang, B., Jang, J. (eds) Information Security Applications. WISA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11402. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17982-3_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17982-3_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17981-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17982-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics