Biblio
Security analysts implement various security mechanisms to protect systems from attackers. Even though these mechanisms try to secure systems, a talented attacker may use these same techniques to launch a sophisticated attack. This paper discuss about such an attack called as user account Denial of Service (DoS) where an attacker uses user account lockout features of the application to lockout all user accounts causing an enterprise wide DoS. The attack has being simulated usingastealthy attack mechanism called as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) using a XMPP based botnet. Through the simulation, researchers discuss about the patterns associated with the attack which can be used to detect the attack in real time and how the attack can be prevented from the perspective of developers, system engineers and security analysts.
In this paper, we consider the impact of a weaker model of eventual consistency on distributed multi-player games. This model is suitable for networks in which hosts can leave and join at anytime, e.g., in an intermittently connected environment. Such a consistency model is provided by the Secure Infrastructure for Networked Systems (SINS) [24], a reliable middleware framework. SINS allows agents to communicate asynchronously through a distributed transactional key-value store using anonymous publish-subscribe. It uses Lamport's Paxos protocol [17] to replicate state. We consider a multi-player maze game as example to illustrate our consistency model and the impact of network losses/delays therein. The framework based on SINS presented herein provides a vehicle for studying the effect of human elements participating in collaborative simulation of a physical world as in war games.
An aspect of database forensics that has not received much attention in the academic research community yet is the presence of database triggers. Database triggers and their implementations have not yet been thoroughly analysed to establish what possible impact they could have on digital forensic analysis methods and processes. Conventional database triggers are defined to perform automatic actions based on changes in the database. These changes can be on the data level or the data definition level. Digital forensic investigators might thus feel that database triggers do not have an impact on their work. They are simply interrogating the data and metadata without making any changes. This paper attempts to establish if the presence of triggers in a database could potentially disrupt, manipulate or even thwart forensic investigations. The database triggers as defined in the SQL standard were studied together with a number of database trigger implementations. This was done in order to establish what aspects might have an impact on digital forensic analysis. It is demonstrated in this paper that some of the current database forensic analysis methods are impacted by the possible presence of certain types of triggers in a database. Furthermore, it finds that the forensic interpretation and attribution processes should be extended to include the handling and analysis of database triggers if they are present in a database.