Identification of Attack Paths Using Kill Chain and Attack Graphs

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Authors

SADLEK Lukáš ČELEDA Pavel TOVARŇÁK Daniel

Year of publication 2022
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference NOMS 2022 - 2022 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium
MU Faculty or unit

Institute of Computer Science

Citation
Web https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9789803
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/NOMS54207.2022.9789803
Keywords kill chain; attack graph; threat identification; CVE; MITRE ATT&CK; STRIDE
Attached files
Description The 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.
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