Visible to the public Identification of Attack Paths Using Kill Chain and Attack Graphs

TitleIdentification of Attack Paths Using Kill Chain and Attack Graphs
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2022
AuthorsSadlek, Lukáš, Čeleda, Pavel, Tovarňák, Daniel
Conference NameNOMS 2022-2022 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium
Date Publishedapr
Keywordsasset management, attack graph, Chained Attacks, CVE, cyberattack, Force, Generators, Kill Chain, MITRE ATT&ck, Organizations, pubcrawl, Reconnaissance, resilience, Resiliency, Scalability, Standards organizations, STRIDE, threat identification
AbstractThe ever-evolving capabilities of cyber attackers force security administrators to focus on the early identification of emerging threats. Targeted cyber attacks usually consist of several phases, from initial reconnaissance of the network environment to final impact on objectives. This paper investigates the identification of multi-step cyber threat scenarios using kill chain and attack graphs. Kill chain and attack graphs are threat modeling concepts that enable determining weak security defense points. We propose a novel kill chain attack graph that merges kill chain and attack graphs together. This approach determines possible chains of attacker's actions and their materialization within the protected network. The graph generation uses a categorization of threats according to violated security properties. The graph allows determining the kill chain phase the administrator should focus on and applicable countermeasures to mitigate possible cyber threats. We implemented the proposed approach for a predefined range of cyber threats, especially vulnerability exploitation and network threats. The approach was validated on a real-world use case. Publicly available implementation contains a proof-of-concept kill chain attack graph generator.
NotesISSN: 2374-9709
DOI10.1109/NOMS54207.2022.9789803
Citation Keysadlek_identification_2022