Network forensics on packet fingerprints

Abstract

We present an approach to network forensics that makes it feasible to trace the content of all traffic that passed through the network via packet content fingerprints. We develop a new data structure called the "Rolling Bloom Filter" (RBF), which is based on a generalization of the Rabin-Karp string-matching algorithm. This merges the two key advantages of space efficiency and an efficient content matching mechanism. This also achieves analytically predictable False Positive Rates that can be controlled by tuning the RBF parameters. Leveraging upon these insights, we have designed and implemented a practical Network Forensic System that gives the ability to reconstruct the sequence of events for post-incident analysis. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.