Software consumers often need to choose between different software that provide the same functionality. Today, security is a quality that many consumers, especially system administrators, care about and will use in choosing one software system over another. An attack surface metric is a security metric for comparing the relative security of similar software systems [8]. The measure of a system’s attack surface is an indicator of the system’s security: given two systems, we compare their attack surface measurements to decide whether one is more secure than another along each of the following three dimensions: methods, channels, and data. In this paper, we use the attack surface metric to measure the attack surfaces of two open source FTP daemons: ProFTPD 1.2.10 and Wu-FTPD 2.6.2. Our measurements show that ProFTPD is more secure along the method dimension, ProFTPD is as secure as Wu-FTPD along the channel dimension, and Wu-FTPD is more secure along the data dimension. We also demonstrate how software consumers can use the attack surface metric in making a choice between the two FTP daemons.

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Abstract—Evaluation of network security is an essential step in securing any network. This evaluation can help security professionals in making optimal decisions about how to design security countermeasures, to choose between alternative security architectures, and to systematically modify security configurations in order to improve security. However, the security of a network depends on a number of dynamically changing factors such as emergence of new vulnerabilities and threats, policy structure and network traffic. Identifying, quantifying and validating these factors using security metrics is a major challenge in this area. In this paper, we propose a novel security metric framework that identifies and quantifies objectively the most significant security risk factors, which include existing vulnerabilities, historical trend of vulnerability of the remotely accessible services, prediction of potential vulnerabilities for any general network service and their estimated severity and finally policy resistance to attack propagation within the network. We then describe our rigorous validation experiments using reallife vulnerability data of the past 6 years from National Vulnerability Database (NVD) [10] to show the high accuracy and confidence of the proposed metrics. Some previous works have considered vulnerabilities using code analysis. However, as far as we know, this is the first work to study and analyze these metrics for network security evaluation using publicly available vulnerability information and security policy configuration. 1 I.

Abstract—Security of a network depends on a number of dynamically changing factors. These include emergence of new vulnerabilities and threats, policy structure and network traffic. Due to the dynamic nature of these factors, identifying security metrics that measure objectively the quality of security configuration pose a major challenge. Moreover, this evaluation must be done dynamically to handle real time changes in the threat toward the network. In this paper, we extend our security metric framework [2] that identifies and quantifies objectively the most significant security risk factors, which include existing vulnerabilities, historical trend of vulnerabilities of remotely accessible services, prediction of potential vulnerabilities for any general network service and their estimated severity and finally propagation of an attack within the network. We have implemented this framework as a user-friendly tool called Risk based prOactive seCurity cOnfiguration maNAger (ROCONA) and showed how this tool simplifies security configuration management using risk measurement and mitigation. I.

Abstract. Much of the world's critical infrastructure is at risk from attack through electronic networks connected to control systems. Security metrics are important because they provide the basis for management decisions that affect the protection of the infrastructure. A cyber security technical metric is the security relevant output from an explicit mathematical model that makes use of objective measurements of a technical object. A specific set of technical security metrics are proposed for use by the operators of control systems. Our proposed metrics are based on seven security ideals associated with seven corresponding abstract dimensions of security. We have defined at least one metric for each of the seven ideals. Each metric is a measure of how nearly the associated ideal has been achieved. These seven ideals provide a useful structure for further metrics development. A case study shows how the proposed metrics can be applied to an operational control system. Keywords: Cyber Security Metrics, Control System Security. 1

Abstract. The security risk of a network against unknown zero day attacks has been considered as something unmeasurable since software flaws are less predictable than hardware faults and the process of finding such flaws and developing exploits seems to be chaotic. In this paper, we propose a novel security metric, k-zero day safety, based on the number of unknown zero day vulnerabilities. That is, the metric simply counts how many unknown vulnerabilities would be required for compromising a network asset, regardless of what vulnerabilities those might be. We formally define the metric based on an abstract model of networks and attacks. We then devise algorithms for computing the metric. Finally, we show the metric can quantify many existing practices in hardening a network. 1

Abstract. We argue that a general theory of trust in networks of humans and computers must be build on both a theory of behavioral trust and a theory of computational trust. This argument is motivated by increased participation of people in social networking, crowdsourcing, human computation, and socio-economic protocols, e.g., protocols modeled by trust and gift-exchange games [3, 10, 11], norms-establishing contracts [1], and scams [6, 35, 33]. User participation in these protocols relies primarily on trust, since on-line verification of protocol compliance is often impractical; e.g., verification can lead to undecidable problems, co-NP complete test procedures, and user inconvenience. Trust is captured by participant preferences (i.e., risk and betrayal aversion) and beliefs in the trustworthiness of other protocol participants [11, 10]. Both preferences and beliefs can be enhanced whenever protocol non-compliance leads to punishment of untrustworthy participants [11, 23]; i.e., it seems natural that betrayal aversion can be decreased and belief in trustworthiness

Abstract: The attack surface of a system represents the exposure of application objects to attackers and is affected primarily by architecture and design decisions. Given otherwise consistent conditions, reducing the attack surface of a system or an application is expected to reduce its overall vulnerability. So far, only systems have been considered but not single applications. As web applications provide a large set of applications built upon a common set of concepts and technologies, we choose them as an example, and provide qualitative and quantitative indicators. We propose a multidimensional metric for the attack surface of web applications, and discuss the rationale behind. Our metric is easy to use. It comprises both a scalar numeric indicator for easy comparison and a more detailed vector representation for deeper analysis. The metric can be used to guide security testing and development. We validate the applicability and suitability of the metric with popular web applications, of which knowledge about their vulnerability already exists. 1

As networked computing objects become ubiquitous, consequently our reliance on their sustained functionality also increases. Unfortunately, the networked interactions also result in multi-faceted threats arising at individual system level that may compromise the security of the entire networked system. To properly assess such threats, to devise countermeasures and to enhance the design stage resilience of networked designs, a new methodology called Threat modeling has emerged. This chapter introduces the basis of Threat modeling and outlines its usage as applied to an actual networked application case study.

Abstract — In this paper we present a new method to assess risks of attacks faced by a network. Our methodology approaches these risks from the perspective of an attacker in order to bridge the gap created by traditional security schemes which approach from the defender’s perspective. These dual perspectives of risk analysis can lead to more effective solutions to security. We describe the various parameters that affect an attack in the real world and use these parameters to analyze the risks of an attack. We also create a model for formally analyzing the risk of an attack using the above parameters. We finally use a case study of jamming attacks on the MAC Layer of the OSI Stack as an illustration and assess the risks for different MAC protocols.