Enabling Efficient Attack Investigation via Human-in-the-Loop Security Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tsegai, Saimon Amanuel, Yang, Xinyu, Liu, Haoyuan, Gao, Peng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Tsegai, Saimon Amanuel
Yang, Xinyu
Liu, Haoyuan
Gao, Peng
author_facet Tsegai, Saimon Amanuel
Yang, Xinyu
Liu, Haoyuan
Gao, Peng
contents System auditing is a vital technique for collecting system call events as system provenance and investigating complex multi-step attacks such as Advanced Persistent Threats. However, existing attack investigation methods struggle to uncover long attack sequences due to the massive volume of system provenance data and their inability to focus on attack-relevant parts. In this paper, we present Provexa, a defense system that enables human analysts to effectively analyze large-scale system provenance to reveal multi-step attack sequences. Provexa introduces an expressive domain-specific language, ProvQL, that offers essential primitives for various types of attack analyses (e.g., attack pattern search, attack dependency tracking) with user-defined constraints, enabling analysts to focus on attack-relevant parts and iteratively sift through the large provenance data. Moreover, Provexa provides an optimized execution engine for efficient language execution. Our extensive evaluations on a wide range of attack scenarios demonstrate the practical effectiveness of Provexa in facilitating timely attack investigation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_05403
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling Efficient Attack Investigation via Human-in-the-Loop Security Analysis
Tsegai, Saimon Amanuel
Yang, Xinyu
Liu, Haoyuan
Gao, Peng
Cryptography and Security
Computation and Language
Databases
System auditing is a vital technique for collecting system call events as system provenance and investigating complex multi-step attacks such as Advanced Persistent Threats. However, existing attack investigation methods struggle to uncover long attack sequences due to the massive volume of system provenance data and their inability to focus on attack-relevant parts. In this paper, we present Provexa, a defense system that enables human analysts to effectively analyze large-scale system provenance to reveal multi-step attack sequences. Provexa introduces an expressive domain-specific language, ProvQL, that offers essential primitives for various types of attack analyses (e.g., attack pattern search, attack dependency tracking) with user-defined constraints, enabling analysts to focus on attack-relevant parts and iteratively sift through the large provenance data. Moreover, Provexa provides an optimized execution engine for efficient language execution. Our extensive evaluations on a wide range of attack scenarios demonstrate the practical effectiveness of Provexa in facilitating timely attack investigation.
title Enabling Efficient Attack Investigation via Human-in-the-Loop Security Analysis
topic Cryptography and Security
Computation and Language
Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.05403