Content area

Abstract

The rapid detection of attackers within firewalls of enterprise computer net- works is of paramount importance. Anomaly detectors address this problem by quantifying deviations from baseline statistical models of normal network behav- ior and signaling an intrusion when the observed data deviates significantly from the baseline model. However, many anomaly detectors do not take into account plausible attacker behavior. As a result, anomaly detectors are prone to a large number of false positives due to unusual but benign activity. This paper first in- troduces a stochastic model of attacker behavior which is motivated by real world attacker traversal. Then, we develop a likelihood ratio detector that compares the probability of observed network behavior under normal conditions against the case when an attacker has possibly compromised a subset of hosts within the network. Since the likelihood ratio detector requires integrating over the time each host be- comes compromised, we illustrate how to use Monte Carlo methods to compute the requisite integral. We then present Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves for various network parameterizations that show for any rate of true posi- tives, the rate of false positives for the likelihood ratio detector is no higher than that of a simple anomaly detector and is often lower. We conclude by demon- strating the superiority of the proposed likelihood ratio detector when the network topologies and parameterizations are extracted from real-world networks.

Details

1009240
Title
A Likelihood Ratio Detector for Identifying Within-Perimeter Computer Network Attacks
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2016
Publication date
Sep 1, 2016
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2016-09-02
Milestone dates
2016-09-01 (Submission v1)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
02 Sep 2016
ProQuest document ID
2079558273
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/likelihood-ratio-detector-identifying-within/docview/2079558273/se-2?accountid=208611
Full text outside of ProQuest
Copyright
© 2016. This work is published under http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-06-26
Database
ProQuest One Academic