A service dependency model for cost-sensitive intrusion response

Abstract

Recent advances in intrusion detection and prevention have brought promising solutions to enhance IT security. Despite these efforts, the battle with cyber attackers has reached a deadlock. While attackers always try to unveil new vulnerabilities, security experts are bounded to keep their softwares compliant with the latest updates. Intrusion response systems are thus relegated to a second rank because no one trusts them to modify system configuration during runtime. Current response cost evaluation techniques do not cover all impact aspects, favoring availability over confidentiality and integrity. They do not profit from the findings in intrusion prevention which led to powerful models including vulnerability graphs, exploit graphs, etc. This paper bridges the gap between these models and service dependency models that are used for response evaluation. It proposes a new service dependency representation that enables intrusion and response impact evaluation. The outcome is a service dependency model and a complete methodology to use this model in order to evaluate intrusion and response costs. The latter covers response collateral damages and positive response effects as they reduce intrusion costs. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.