Published: September 11, 2014
Author(s)
Lingyu Wang, Mengyuan Zhang, Sushil Jajodia, Anoop Singhal, Massimiliano Albanese
Conference
Name: 19th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2014)
Dates: 09/07/2014 - 09/11/2014
Location: Wroclaw, Poland
Citation: Computer Security - ESORICS 2014, vol. 8713, pp. 494-511
The interest in diversity as a security mechanism has recently been revived in various applications, such as Moving Target Defense (MTD), resisting worms in sensor networks, and improving the robustness of network routing. However, most existing efforts on formally modeling diversity have focused on a single system running diverse software replicas or variants. At a higher abstraction level, as a global property of the entire network, diversity and its impact on security have received limited attention. In this paper, we take the first step towards formally modeling network diversity as a security metric for evaluating the robustness of networks against potential zero day attacks. Specifically, we first devise a biodiversity-inspired metric based on the effective number of distinct resources. We then propose two complementary diversity metrics, based on the least and the average attacking efforts, respectively. Finally, we evaluate our algorithm and metrics through simulation.
The interest in diversity as a security mechanism has recently been revived in various applications, such as Moving Target Defense (MTD), resisting worms in sensor networks, and improving the robustness of network routing. However, most existing efforts on formally modeling diversity have focused on...
See full abstract
The interest in diversity as a security mechanism has recently been revived in various applications, such as Moving Target Defense (MTD), resisting worms in sensor networks, and improving the robustness of network routing. However, most existing efforts on formally modeling diversity have focused on a single system running diverse software replicas or variants. At a higher abstraction level, as a global property of the entire network, diversity and its impact on security have received limited attention. In this paper, we take the first step towards formally modeling network diversity as a security metric for evaluating the robustness of networks against potential zero day attacks. Specifically, we first devise a biodiversity-inspired metric based on the effective number of distinct resources. We then propose two complementary diversity metrics, based on the least and the average attacking efforts, respectively. Finally, we evaluate our algorithm and metrics through simulation.
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Keywords
diversity; network robustness; network security; security metrics; zero day attack
Control Families
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