Biblio

Modern Intrusion Detection Systems are able to identify and check all traffic crossing the network segments that they are only set to monitor. Traditional network infrastructures use static detection mechanisms that check and monitor specific types of malicious traffic. To mitigate this potential waste of resources and improve scalability across an entire network, we propose a methodology which deploys distributed IDS in a Software Defined Network allowing them to be used for specific types of traffic as and when it appears on a network. The core of our work is the creation of an SDN application that takes input from a Snort IDS instances, thus working as a classifier for incoming network traffic with a static ruleset for those classifications. Our application has been tested on a virtualised platform where it performed as planned holding its position for limited use on static and controlled test environments.

Threat information sharing is considered as one of the proactive defensive approaches for enhancing the over-all security of trusted partners. Trusted partner organizations can provide access to past and current cybersecurity threats for reducing the risk of a potential cyberattack—the requirements for threat information sharing range from simplistic sharing of documents to threat intelligence sharing. Therefore, the storage and sharing of highly sensitive threat information raises considerable concerns regarding constructing a secure, trusted threat information exchange infrastructure. Establishing a trusted ecosystem for threat sharing will promote the validity, security, anonymity, scalability, latency efficiency, and traceability of the stored information that protects it from unauthorized disclosure. This paper proposes a system that ensures the security principles mentioned above by utilizing a distributed ledger technology that provides secure decentralized operations through smart contracts and provides a privacy-preserving ecosystem for threat information storage and sharing regarding the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

Domain squatting is a common adversarial practice where attackers register domain names that are purposefully similar to popular domains. In this work, we study a specific type of domain squatting called "combosquatting," in which attackers register domains that combine a popular trademark with one or more phrases (e.g., betterfacebook[.]com, youtube-live[.]com). We perform the first large-scale, empirical study of combosquatting by analyzing more than 468 billion DNS records - collected from passive and active DNS data sources over almost six years. We find that almost 60% of abusive combosquatting domains live for more than 1,000 days, and even worse, we observe increased activity associated with combosquatting year over year. Moreover, we show that combosquatting is used to perform a spectrum of different types of abuse including phishing, social engineering, affiliate abuse, trademark abuse, and even advanced persistent threats. Our results suggest that combosquatting is a real problem that requires increased scrutiny by the security community.