Security Basics - Topic 2

Question 1

Motivation, targets, methods: Information Warfare

Answer 1

Motivation:
Military or political dominance

Targets:
Critical infrastructure, political and military assets

Methods:
Attack, corrupt, exploit, deny, conjoint with a physical attack

Question 2

Motivation, targets, methods: Information Warfare

Answer 2

Motivation:
Military or political dominance

Targets:
Governments, companies, individuals

Methods:
Advanced persistent threats

Question 3

Motivation, targets, methods: Cyber Crime

Answer 3

Motivation:
Economic Gain

Targets:
Governments, companies, individuals

Methods:
Fraud, ID theft, Extortion, Exploit

Question 4

Motivation, targets, methods: Cracking

Answer 4

Motivation:
Ego, personal enmity

Targets:
Governments, companies, individuals

Methods:
Attack, Exploit

Question 5

Motivation, targets, methods: Hacktivism

Answer 5

Motivation:
Political change

Targets:
Governments, Companies

Methods:
Attack, defacing

Question 6

Motivation, targets, methods: Cyber Terror

Answer 6

Motivation:
Political change

Targets:
Individuals, Companies

Methods:
Marketing, command and control, computer-based violence

Question 7

What does CIA stand for?

Answer 7

Threats in a generic context (Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability)

Question 8

What is disclosure?

Answer 8

Threats to confidentiality.

Snooping, sniffing (data in transit)
Unauthorised access (systems, data at rest)

Question 9

What is deception?

Answer 9

Fraud and forgeries; threats to integrity

Question 10

What is deception?

Answer 10

Fraud and forgeries; threats to integrity

Spoofing (Identity theft)
Unauthorised data modification
Replay (intercept and retransmit)
Repudiation (false denial) of origin, repudiation of receipt

Question 11

What is disruption?

Answer 11

Threat to availability

Modification, delay, Denial of Service (DoS)

Question 12

What are the three types of Integrity / Authenticity / Authentication (making sure data is authentic)?

Answer 12

Entity integrity (entity indeed has the claimed identity)

Content Integrity (any unauthorised modification and replay of data can be detected)

Origin Integrity (data is indeed from the claimed source)

Question 13

What is freshness?

Answer 13

Ensuring data is not a replay/retransmission of ‘old’ data

Question 14

What is non-reupdiation?

Answer 14

Protecting against repudiation (false denial)

Question 15

What is fairness?

Answer 15

Either all the parties have received what they expect to receive or none of them receives anything useful

Question 16

What are the three main steps of the achieving security life-cycle

Answer 16

Define your security goal and threat analysis: Identify what to protect against and specify security policy

Design and implement security measures: decide how to protect so as to achieve your goal.

Security assurance (operation, monitoring and maintenance): to assess how well the implementation has achieved the goal

Question 17

Methods for defining the security goal

Answer 17

Threat analysis: identify and decide what to protect against.

Policy/requirement specification: to define what is, and/or is not, allowed.

Question 18

What is threat analysis?

Answer 18

Identify assets, threats and vulnerabilities: to find out what are the most likely avenues in which an attack will succeed at a relatively low cost to the attacker.

Not all threats are worth defeating (cost vs benefit)

Typically carried out with an attack tree analysis method

Question 19

What is the attack tree analysis method?

Answer 19

A conceptual diagram showing how an asset, or target, might be attacked.

Consists of one root node, child nodes and leaf nodes

The root is representative of the attack goal

Child and leaf nodes are conditions under which, or ways/methods by which, one may obtain the goal. If a method in turn requires other intermediate steps, then under each of these child nodes, branch off as appropriate.

Relationship branches may be ‘OR’ or ‘AND’
‘OR’ represents alternative attack methods to succeed in the attack
‘AND’ represents multiple steps required to launch the attack

Each node may be given a value to indicate:
- Likelihood that an attacker will mount the attack, or probability of succeeding the attack
- Cost in succeeding the attack, in terms of monetary cost, or time taken to accomplish the attack etc…

Once done any path from a leaf node to the goal is a potential attack marked with likelihood, or cost…

Question 20

What are detective measures?

Answer 20

Measures taken during or after the attacks, e.g. logging/auditing, intrusion detection systems (host-based, network-based, hybrid, …)

Question 21

What is response and recovery in the design and implementation phase of the achieving security life cycle?

Answer 21

Measures to repair any damage so that the system can continue to function correctly even if an attack succeeds, .e.g. backup.

Question 22

What is cost-benefit analysis?

Answer 22

Is it cheaper to prevent (using security mechanisms) or recover (e.g. using restoration from backup) or just ignore?

Question 23

What is security assurance?

Answer 23

To assess how well the implementation has achieved the goal

Testing to assess the correct implementation of policies

Formal evaluation of the implementation.

Question 24

Name some security assurance standards

Answer 24

US Security Evaluation Criteria (the Orange book)

European ITSEC (Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria)

Question 25

Name some human cybersecurity issues

Answer 25

Organisational issues: power and responsibility, financial benefits

People problems: outsiders and insiders, social engineering

Question 26

What happens if security is put in as an after-thought instead of at the beginning?

Answer 26

The system is usually not secure and more expensive.