DOCSLIB.ORG

Tracking and Mitigation of Malicious Remote Control Networks

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Tracking and Mitigation of Malicious Remote Control Networks Tracking and Mitigation of Malicious Remote Control Networks Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Naturwissenschaften der Universität Mannheim vorgelegt von Thorsten Holz aus Trier Mannheim, 2009 Dekan: Prof. Dr. Felix Christoph Freiling, Universität Mannheim Referent: Prof. Dr. Felix Christoph Freiling, Universität Mannheim Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Christopher Krügel, University of California, Santa Barbara Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 30. April 2009 Abstract Attacks against end-users are one of the negative side effects of today’s networks. The goal of the attacker is to compromise the victim’s machine and obtain control over it. This machine is then used to carry out denial-of-service attacks, to send out spam mails, or for other nefarious purposes. From an attacker’s point of view, this kind of attack is even more efficient if she manages to compromise a large number of machines in parallel. In order to control all these machines, she establishes a malicious remote control network, i.e., a mechanism that enables an attacker the control over a large number of compromised machines for illicit activities. The most common type of these networks observed so far are so called botnets. Since these networks are one of the main factors behind current abuses on the Internet, we need to find novel approaches to stop them in an automated and efficient way. In this thesis we focus on this open problem and propose a general root cause methodology to stop malicious remote control networks. The basic idea of our method consists of three steps. In the first step, we use honeypots to collect information. A honeypot is an information system resource whose value lies in unauthorized or illicit use of that resource. This technique enables us to study current attacks on the Internet and we can for example capture samples of autonomous spreading malware (malicious software) in an automated way. We analyze the collected data to extract information about the remote control mechanism in an automated fashion. For example, we utilize an automated binary analysis tool to find the Command & Control (C&C) server that is used to send commands to the infected machines. In the second step, we use the extracted information to infiltrate the malicious remote control networks. This can for example be implemented by impersonating as a bot and infiltrating the remote control channel. Finally, in the third step we use the information collected during the infiltration phase to mitigate the network, e.g., by shutting down the remote control channel such that the attacker cannot send commands to the compromised machines. In this thesis we show the practical feasibility of this method. We examine different kinds of malicious remote control networks and discuss how we can track all of them in an automated way. As a first example, we study botnets that use a central C&C server: We illustrate how the three steps can be implemented in practice and present empirical measurement results obtained on the Internet. Second, we investigate botnets that use a peer-to-peer based communication channel. Mitigating these botnets is harder since no central C&C server exists which could be taken offline. Nevertheless, our methodology can also be applied to this kind of networks and we present empirical measurement results substantiating our method. Third, we study fast-flux service networks. The idea behind these networks is that the attacker does not directly abuse the compromised machines, but uses them to establish a proxy network on top of these machines to enable a robust hosting infrastructure. Our method can be applied to this novel kind of malicious remote control networks and we present empirical results supporting this claim. We anticipate that the methodology proposed in this thesis can also be used to track and mitigate other kinds of malicious remote control networks. i Zusammenfassung Angriffe gegen Nutzer sind einer der negativen Seiteneffekte heutiger Netze. Das Ziel eines Angreifers ist es, die Maschine des Opfers zu kompromittieren und Kontrolle über diese zu erlangen. Die Maschine wird dann dazu benutzt, Denial-of-Service Angriffe durchzuführen, Spam-Nachrichten zu verschicken oder für weitere schädliche Zwecke. Aus der Sicht eines Angreifers sind solche Angriffe noch effizienter, wenn er es schafft, eine große Anzahl an Maschinen gleichzeitig zu kompromittieren. Um alle diese Maschi- nen kontrollieren zu können, setzt der Angreifer ein malicious remote control network auf, das heisst einen Mechanismus, der es dem Angreifer erlaubt, eine große Anzahl an kompromittierten Maschinen zu kontrollieren, um diese für rechtswidrige Aktionen zu benutzen. Die bekannteste Art dieser Netze sind sogenannte Botnetze. Weil diese Netze einer der Hauptfaktoren derzeitiger Missbräuche im Internet sind, benötigen wir neuartige Ansätze, um sie in einem automatisierten und effizienten Prozess stoppen zu können. In dieser Arbeit konzentrieren wir uns auf dieses offene Problem und stellen eine allgemeine Methodik vor, um die Grundursache hinter ma- licious remote control networks zu stoppen. Die Grundidee unserer Methodik besteht aus drei Schritten. Im ersten Schritt benutzen wir Honeypots. Ein Honeypot ist ein Informationssystem, dessen Funktion darin besteht, von Angreifern auf unerlaubte oder nicht autorisierte Weise benutzt zu werden. Diese Technik erlaubt es uns, gegenwärtige Angriffe im Internet zu erforschen und wir können beispielsweise Kopien von Schad- software (malware), die sich selbständig verbreitet, in einem automatisierten Prozess sammeln. Wir analysieren die gesammelten Daten in einem automatisierten Verfahren, um Informationen über den Fernsteuerungsmechanismus zu extrahieren. Wir benutzen beispielsweise ein automatisiertes Programm zur Analyse von Binärdateien, um den Com- mand & Control (C&C) Server zu finden, mit dessen Hilfe Kommandos zu den infizierten Maschinen gesendet werden. Im zweiten Schritt benutzen wir die extrahierten Informa- tionen, um das malicious remote control network zu infiltrieren. Dies kann beispielsweise umgesetzt werden, indem wir das Verhalten eines Bots simulieren und uns in den Fernsteuerungskanal einschleusen. Letztendlich benutzen wir im dritten Schritt die in der Infiltrierungsphase gesammelten Informationen, um das Netz abzuschwächen. Dies geschieht beispielsweise, indem der Kommunikationskanal geschlossen wird, so dass der Angreifer keine Befehle mehr zu den kompromittierten Maschinen senden kann. In dieser Arbeit demonstrieren wir die praktische Umsetzbarkeit der vorgeschlagenen Methodik. Wir untersuchen verschiedene Typen von malicious remote control networks und erörtern, wie wir alle auf automatisierte Art und Weise aufspüren können. Als erstes Beispiel untersuchen wir Botnetze mit einem zentralen C&C-Server: Wir erläutern, wie die vorgeschlagenen drei Schritte in der Praxis umgesetzt werden können und präsentieren empirische Messergebnisse, die im Internet gesammelt wurden. Zweitens erforschen wir Botnetze mit einem Peer-to-Peer-basierten Kommunikationskanal. Eine Abschwächung dieser Botnetze ist schwieriger, da kein zentraler C&C-Server existiert, der abgeschaltet werden könnte. Dennoch kann unsere Methodik auch auf diese Art von Netzen angewandt werden und wir stellen empirische Messergebnisse vor, die unsere Methode untermauern. Als dritten Fall analysieren wir fast-flux service networks. Die iii Idee hinter diesen Netzen ist, dass der Angreifer die kompromittierten Maschinen nicht direkt missbraucht. Stattdessen benutzt er sie dazu, ein Proxy-Netzwerk mit Hilfe dieser Maschinen aufzubauen, das dann eine robuste Hostinginfrastruktur ermöglicht. Unsere Methodik kann auch auf diese neuartige Art von malicious remote control networks angewandt werden und wir präsentieren empirische Ergebnisse, die diese Behauptung bestätigen. Wir erwarten, daß die in dieser Arbeit vorgeschlagene Methodik auch dazu benutzt werden kann, weitere Arten von malicious remote control networks zu verfolgen und abzuschwächen. iv Acknowledgements A thesis is the result of a longer process and often involves collaboration with many different people. I would like to take the opportunity and acknowledge in this section all the individuals who helped me with the work on my thesis during the past years. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Dr. Felix Freiling, for making this thesis possible. He opened me a door to the fascinating world of computer science and shared his insight and wisdom with me. His supervision, advice, and guidance from the early stages of this research on helped me to complete this work. In particular, the discussion about methodologically sound approaches were always insightful and taught me scientific thinking. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Christopher Krügel for his inspiring work and the interesting discussions we had. Our research interests overlap to a large degree and his many impressive publications stimulated my research interests over the years. I am really looking forward to work closely together with him in the near future. There are still lots of open problems and opportunities for further work in this area. In addition, I would like to thank all members of the Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems. Without the support from Maximillian Dornseif, Martin Mink, Lucia Draque Penso Rautenbach, Zina Benenson, Michael Becher, Carsten Willems, Christian Gorecki, Philipp Trinius, Markus Engelberth, and Jan Göbel, there would not have been such a pleasant and prolific
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Strider Web Security
    Adversarial Web Crawling with Strider Monkeys Yi-Min Wang Director, Cyber-Intelligence Lab Internet Services Research Center (ISRC) Microsoft Research Search Engine Basics • Crawler – Crawling policy • Page classification & indexing • Static ranking • Query processing • Document-query matching & dynamic ranking – Diversity • Goals of web crawling – Retrieve web page content seen by browser users – Classify and index the content for search ranking • What is a monkey? – Automation program that mimics human user behavior Stateless Static Crawling • Assumptions – Input to the web server: the URL • Stateless client – Output from the web server: page content in HTML • Static crawler ignores scripts Stateful Static Crawling • We all know that Cookies affect web server response • HTTP User-Agent field affects response too – Some servers may refuse low-value crawlers – Some spammers use crawler-browser cloaking • Give crawlers a page that maximizes ranking (=traffic) • Give users a page that maximizes profit Dynamic Crawling • Simple crawler-browser cloaking can be achieved by returning HTML with scripts – Crawlers only parse static HTML text that maximizes ranking/traffic – Users’ browsers additionally execute the dynamic scripts that maximize profit • Usually redirect to a third-party domain to server ads • Need browser-based dynamic crawlers to index the true content Search Spam Example: Google search “coach handbag” Spam Doorway URL = http://coach-handbag-top.blogspot.com http://coach-handbag-top.blogspot.com/ script execution led to redirection
    [Show full text]
  • Escape from Monkey Island: ? Evading High-Interaction Honeyclients
    Escape from Monkey Island: ? Evading High-Interaction Honeyclients Alexandros Kapravelos1, Marco Cova2, Christopher Kruegel1, Giovanni Vigna1 1 UC Santa Barbara {kapravel,chris,vigna}@cs.ucsb.edu 2 University of Birmingham, UK {m.cova}@cs.bham.ac.uk Abstract. High-interaction honeyclients are the tools of choice to detect mali- cious web pages that launch drive-by-download attacks. Unfortunately, the ap- proach used by these tools, which, in most cases, is to identify the side-effects of a successful attack rather than the attack itself, leaves open the possibility for malicious pages to perform evasion techniques that allow one to execute an at- tack without detection or to behave in a benign way when being analyzed. In this paper, we examine the security model that high-interaction honeyclients use and evaluate their weaknesses in practice. We introduce and discuss a number of possible attacks, and we test them against several popular, well-known high- interaction honeyclients. Our attacks evade the detection of these tools, while successfully attacking regular visitors of malicious web pages. 1 Introduction In a drive-by-download attack, a user is lured into visiting a malicious web page, which contains code that exploits vulnerabilities in the user’s browser and/or its environment. If successful, the exploits can execute arbitrary code on the victim’s machine [33]. This ability is typically used to automatically download and run malware programs on the compromised machine, which, as a consequence, often becomes part of a botnet [31]. Drive-by-download attacks are one of the most pervasive threats on the web, and past measurements have found millions of malicious web pages [3, 32].
    [Show full text]
  • Hakin9 Extra Followers, We [email protected] Are Giving You the Latest Fruit of Our Labour
    Szukaj nas takze na www.ashampoo.com Pwn Plug. The Industry’s First Commercial Air Freshener? Pentesting Drop Box. Printer PSU? ...nope FEATURES: % Covert tunneling % SSH access over 3G/GSM cell networks % NAC/802.1x bypass % and more! Discover the glory of Universal Plug & Pwn @ pwnieexpress.com t) @pwnieexpress e) [email protected] p) 802.227.2PWN pwnplug - Dave-ad3-203x293mm.indd 1 1/5/12 3:32 PM To hack or not to hack Managing: Michał Wiśniewski – that is [email protected] the question Senior Consultant/Publisher: Paweł Marciniak Editor in Chief: Grzegorz Tabaka ear Hakin9 Extra Followers, we [email protected] are giving you the latest fruit of our labour. Honeypots are our le- Art Director: itmotiv this month. Especially for Marcin Ziółkowski Dyou, our dear followers, we have selected the choicest articles within the topic of Ho- DTP: neypots/Honeynets. I sincerely hope that we Marcin Ziółkowski sufficiently expanded on the topic to satisfy www.gdstudio.pl your needs and we quenched your appetite for Hakin9 knowledge. I am also very happy Production Director: that we managed to have an exclusive inte- Andrzej Kuca rview with Dr. Fred Cohen – the „father” of [email protected] computer viruses and that, once again, our respected authors helped us with their con- Marketing Director: tributions. This month: Jeremiah Brott will, Grzegorz Tabaka in great detail, tell you about different ty- [email protected] pes of honeypots and their use. Roberto Saia is going to present you „Proactive Network Proofreadres: Defence Through Simulated Networks”. Hari Bob Folden, I.
    [Show full text]
  • A Multidimensional Analysis of Malicious and Compromised Websites Davide Canali
    A multidimensional analysis of malicious and compromised websites Davide Canali To cite this version: Davide Canali. A multidimensional analysis of malicious and compromised websites. Cryptography and Security [cs.CR]. Télécom ParisTech, 2014. English. NNT : 2014ENST0009. tel-01361433 HAL Id: tel-01361433 https://pastel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01361433 Submitted on 7 Sep 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 2014-ENST-0009 EDITE - ED 130 Doctorat ParisTech T H È S E pour obtenir le grade de docteur délivré par TELECOM ParisTech Spécialité « Informatique et Réseaux » présentée et soutenue publiquement par Davide CANALI le 12 Février 2014 Plusieurs Axes d’Analyse de sites web compromis et malicieux Directeur de thèse : Davide BALZAROTTI Jury M. Levente BUTTYÁN , Professeur, CrySyS Lab, Budapest University of Technology and Economics Rapporteur M. Michael Donald BAILEY , Professeur, Network and Security Research Group, University of Michigan Rapporteur M. Guillaume URVOY-KELLER , Professeur, Laboratoire I3S, Université de Nice Examinateur M. Marc DACIER , Professeur Associé, Département Réseaux et Sécurité, EURECOM Examinateur M. William ROBERTSON , Maitre de Conferences, Systems Security Lab, Northeastern University Examinateur M. Refik MOLVA , Professeur, Département Réseaux et Sécurité, EURECOM Examinateur TELECOM ParisTech école de l’Institut Télécom - membre de ParisTech 2014-ENST-0009 EDITE - ED 130 ParisTech Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Computational Resource Abuse in Web Applications
    Computational Resource Abuse in Web Applications Juan David Parra Rodriguez Dissertation eingereicht an der Fakult¨atf¨ur Informatik und Mathematik der Universit¨at Passau zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Naturwissenschaften A dissertation submitted to the faculty of computer science and mathematics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of natural sciences Betreuer: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Joachim Posegga Passau, Germany, April 2019 Abstract Internet browsers include Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to support Web applications that require complex functionality, e.g., to let end users watch videos, make phone calls, and play video games. Meanwhile, many Web applications employ the browser APIs to rely on the user's hardware to execute intensive computation, access the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), use persistent storage, and establish network connections. However, providing access to the system's computational resources, i.e., processing, storage, and networking, through the browser creates an opportunity for attackers to abuse resources. Principally, the problem occurs when an attacker compromises a Web site and includes malicious code to abuse its visitor's computational resources. For example, an attacker can abuse the user's system networking capabilities to perform a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against third parties. What is more, computational resource abuse has not received widespread attention from the Web security community because most of the current specifications are focused on content and session properties such as isolation, confidentiality, and integrity. Our primary goal is to study computational resource abuse and to advance the state of the art by providing a general attacker model, multiple case studies, a thorough anal- ysis of available security mechanisms, and a new detection mechanism.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards Detection and Prevention of Malicious Activities Against Web Applications and Internet Services
    Towards Detection and Prevention of Malicious Activities Against Web Applications and Internet Services Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktor-Ingenieurs der Fakult¨at fur¨ Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik an der Ruhr-Universit¨at Bochum vorgelegt von Apostolos Zarras aus Athen, Griechenland Bochum, August 2015 Tag der mundlichen¨ Prufung:¨ 27.08.2015 Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz, Ruhr-Universit¨at Bochum Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Herbert Bos, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Abstract The Internet has witnessed a tremendous growth the last years. Undoubtedly, its services and mostly the World Wide Web have become an integral part in the lives of hundreds of millions of people, who use it in daily basis. Unfortunately, as the Internet's popularity increases, so does the interest of attackers who seek to exploit vulnerabilities in users' machines. What was primary meant to be mainly a competition among computer experts to test and improve their technical skills has turned into a multi-billion dollar business. Nowadays, attackers try to take under their control vulnerable computers that will allow them to perform their nefarious tasks, such as sending spam emails, launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, generate revenue from online advertisements by performing click-frauds, or stealing personal data like email accounts and banking credentials. In this dissertation, we address the security issues online users face every day from two points of view. First, we investigate how infected computers that constitu- te a botnet|network of compromised machines which are remotely controlled by an entity, known as botmaster|perform their malicious activities and we propose countermeasures against them. We study two of the most fundamental Internet pro- tocols, SMTP and HTTP, and leverage the fact that numerous entities, including cybercriminals, implement these protocols with subtle but perceivable differences, which we can accurately detect.
    [Show full text]
  • A Solution for the Automated Detection of Clickjacking Attacks
    A Solution for the Automated Detection of Clickjacking Attacks Marco Balduzzi Manuel Egele Institute Eurecom Technical University Vienna Sophia-Antipolis [email protected] [email protected] Engin Kirda Davide Balzarotti Christopher Kruegel Institute Eurecom Institute Eurecom University of California Sophia-Antipolis Sophia-Antipolis Santa Barbara [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION Clickjacking is a web-based attack that has recently received Web applications have evolved from simple collections of a wide media coverage. In a clickjacking attack, a malicious static HTML documents to complex, full-fledged applica- page is constructed such that it tricks victims into clicking tions containing hundreds of dynamically generated pages. on an element of a different page that is only barely (or not The combined use of client and server-side scripting allows at all) visible. By stealing the victim’s clicks, an attacker developers to provide highly sophisticated user interfaces could force the user to perform an unintended action that is with the look-and-feel and functionalities that were previ- advantageous for the attacker (e.g., initiate an online money ously only reserved to traditional desktop applications. At transaction). Although clickjacking has been the subject the same time, many web applications have evolved into of many discussions and alarming reports, it is currently mesh-ups and aggregation sites that are dynamically con- unclear to what extent clickjacking is being used by attackers structed by combining together content and functionalities in the wild, and how significant the attack is for the security provided by different sources.
    [Show full text]
  • Automated Web Patrol with Strider Honeymonkeys: Finding Web Sites That Exploit Browser Vulnerabilities
    Automated Web Patrol with Strider HoneyMonkeys: Finding Web Sites That Exploit Browser Vulnerabilities Yi-Min Wang, Doug Beck, Xuxian Jiang, Roussi Roussev, Chad Verbowski, Shuo Chen, and Sam King Microsoft Research, Redmond Abstract these analyses provide very useful and detailed information about which vulnerabilities are exploited and Internet attacks that use malicious web sites to install which malware programs are installed, such efforts are not malware programs by exploiting browser vulnerabilities scalable, do not provide a comprehensive picture of the are a serious emerging threat. In response, we have problem, and are generally ineffective at efficiently developed an automated web patrol system to finding new malicious sites. automatically identify and monitor these malicious sites. To address these issues, we developed a system that We describe the design and implementation of the Strider uses a pipeline of active, client-side, Virtual Machine HoneyMonkey Exploit Detection System, which consists of (VM)-based honeypots [H,HC], called Strider a pipeline of “monkey programs” running possibly HoneyMonkeys, to perform large-scale, systematic and vulnerable browsers on virtual machines with different automated web patrol. The HoneyMonkey system uses patch levels and patrolling the Web to seek out and monkey programs1 that run within virtual machines with classify web sites that exploit browser vulnerabilities. OS’s of various patch levels to drive web browsers in an Within the first month of utilizing this system, we attempt to mimic human web browsing. Our approach identified 752 unique URLs hosted on 288 web sites that adopts a state-management methodology to cybersecurity: could successfully exploit unpatched Windows XP instead of directly detecting the acts of vulnerability machines.
    [Show full text]
  • IEEE Paper Template in A4 (V1)
    International Journal of Engineering Inventions ISSN: 2278-7461, www.ijeijournal.com Volume 1, Issue 8 (October2012) PP: 01-06 AUTOMATED WEB PATROLING WITH EXPLOIT DETECTION OF MALICIOUS SITES 1 2 Ms. Rajashree C. Sonawane , Prof. Mrs. S.M.Jaybhaye 1,2Department of Information TechnologySinhgad College of Engineering, University of Pune, Pune Abstract:––Client-side attacks are on the rise malicious websites that exploit vulnerabilities in the visitor’s browser are posing a serious threat to client security, compromising innocent users who visit these sites without having a patched web browser. Malicious websites are websites which have any kind of content that could be a threat for the security of the clients requesting particular sites. Currently, there is neither a freely available comprehensive database of threats on the Web nor sufficient freely available tools to build such a database. The purpose of an exploit is almost always to introduce some piece of arbitrary code on the victim machine, as a way to achieve a larger attack goal. It is not uncommon to see a malicious web page attempting to exploit multiple browser vulnerabilities in order to maximize the chance of a successful attack. Hence Honey Monkeys, introduce the Monkey-Spider project. Utilizing it as a client honey pot, the portray the challenge in such an approach and evaluate system as a high-speed, Internet scale analysis tool to build a database of threats found in the wild. Furthermore, it evaluates the system by analysing different crawls performed. I. INTRODUCTION Internet attacks that use a malicious or hacked web site to exploit unpatched client-side vulnerabilities of visiting browsers are on the rise.
    [Show full text]
  • Tamper-Resilient Methods for Web-Based Open Systems
    TAMPER-RESILIENT METHODS FOR WEB-BASED OPEN SYSTEMS A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty by James Caverlee In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology August 2007 Copyright c 2007 by James Caverlee TAMPER-RESILIENT METHODS FOR WEB-BASED OPEN SYSTEMS Approved by: Ling Liu, Advisor Sham Navathe College of Computing College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology William B. Rouse, Co-Advisor Sushil K. Prasad Tennenbaum Institute, Industrial & Department of Computer Science Systems Engineering (Joint Appointment Georgia State University with College of Computing) Georgia Institute of Technology Jonathon Giffin Calton Pu College of Computing College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Date Approved: 18 June 2007 For Sherry iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am pleased to acknowledge the generous support of the Tennenbaum Institute in providing me a Tennenbaum Fellowship for this research. In addition, I am grateful for the positive influence and the many contributions of a number of special people – people who have encouraged, guided, and inspired me. My parents are my foundation. Sam and Ellen Caverlee are two incredibly encouraging and supportive parents. They have been with me every step of the way, encouraging me to push myself to my limits and supporting me when I fall short. They are an inspiration to me and provide a blueprint for how to live a moral life. I love you, Mom and Dad. My brother John has always been there for me. John has a way of grounding me, so that I maintain my focus and don’t float off into a self-imposed nerd orbit.
    [Show full text]
  • John R. Vacca
    Network and System Security This page intentionally left blank Network and System Security Editor John R. Vacca AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS • SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO Syngress is an imprint of Elsevier Syngress is an imprint of Elsevier 30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, UK Network and System Security # 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Material in the work originally appeared in the Computer and Information Security Handbook, edited by John R. Vacca (Elsevier, Inc. 2009). No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
    [Show full text]
  • * "What Tech Skills Are Hot for 2006
    Ειδήσεις για την ΑΣΦΑΛΕΙΑ στις ΤΠΕ απ’ όλο τον κόσμο... Δελτίο 15 17 Μάρτη 2006 Md. House Approves Paper Ballots Washington Post (03/10/06) P. A1; Α. Marimow, Υ. Woodlee In a unanimous vote, the Maryland House of Delegates endorsed the use of paper ballots in its next election, scrapping the state's touch-screen machines in a move supported by Repub- lican Gov. R. Ehrlich that represents an about-face for a state that had been at the forefront of touch-screen voting technology in 2001. Under the plan, the state would lease optical ballot machines for $13 million, while the $90 million touch-screen machines would be shelved for one year. It remains uncertain how the plan will fare in the Senate, and there is no money in Ehrlich's budget earmarked for the new machines. Diebold will demonstrate for lawmakers an updated version of its touch-screen system that produces a paper record. The challenges that Maryland has had in selecting a voting system are typical of the pains that election offi- cials feel nationwide as computer experts question the reliability and security of touch-screen systems. Voter verification is now required in more than two dozen states as advocacy groups have lobbied to ensure that voters can have confidence in the accuracy of their ballot. Within Maryland, some officials have argued that optical scan machines are a step in the wrong direction, given that the hand-marked ballots can produce ambiguous results. "There is no evidence of anything wrong with Maryland elections," said J. Willis, the former Secre- tary of State, pointing to the study conducted by the California Institute of Technology and MIT that identified Maryland as the state with the lowest voter error in 2004.
    [Show full text]