Transcript Complexity Analysis

Sanjay Goel
School of Business
University at Albany, SUNY
April 12-15, 2010
GarmischPartenkirchen,
Germany
Connecting the Dots in Cyber Intelligence:
How Real is the threat to the Critical Infrastructure?
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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL FORUM
SCADA Systems
Infrastructure Risk
• SCADA
systems
integrated
• Recent
reports claim
US power grid
compromised
• Possible link
between
blackouts and
terrorists
• Smart Grid
cause for
concern
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SCADA Systems
Infrastructure Risk
• There has been a
relative lack of
forthcoming information
on the attacks on the
critical infrastructure
• Probing and attacks
continue from several
sources (nations and
transnational groups)
• Attacks on the
infrastructure are
inevitable
• We need to intelligently
manage our risks
3
SCADA Systems
Water Supply
• There are 54,064 separate
water systems in the U.S.
(3,769 serve 81%
population; 353 systems
serve forty-four percent of
the population.
• The disparate control
systems makes the job of
cyber warriors difficult
• At worst the cyber terrorists
will be able to disrupt the
supply for a short duration
in a specific segment
• Any toxins would be diluted
in the water supply
Source: Lewis, James, “Assessing the Risks of Cyber Terrorism, Cyber War and Other Cyber Threats”, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, December 2002.
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US Electrical Grid
Highly Interconnected Network
• Highly
interdependent
• Failures can spread
rapidly
Sanjay
Goel, School of Business, UAlbany
Source: Talbot D., “Lifeline for Renewable Power”, MIT Technology
Review, January/February, 2009.
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SCADA Systems
Vulnerabilities in Infrastructure
1:58 pm
Eastlake
Ohio plant
shuts
down
3:06 pm A
First
Energy
345-KV
transmissi
on line
fails south
of
Cleveland
Ohio
4:10 pm Transmission lines
start tripping in Michigan and
Ohio blocking flow of power
East. Due to deficit
Generators shut down.
Causing blackout in the East
4:09 pm Voltage
sags as Ohio draws
2GW from Michigan
4:05 pm Sustained
power surge on
Ohio lines
3:17 pm Voltage dips
temporarily on Ohio portion
of grid causing power to
shift to another transmission
line which fails
3:41& 3:46 pm
2 breakers connecting
First Energy’s grid with
American Electric
Power tripped
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SCADA Systems
CAL-ISO Hacking
Hackers Victimize Cal-ISO
Dan Morain, June 09, 2001
For at least 17 days at the height of
the energy crisis, hackers mounted
an attack on a computer system
that is integral to the movement of
electricity throughout California…
The hackers' success, though
apparently limited, brought to light
lapses in computer security at the
target of the cyber-attack, the
California ISO, which oversees most
of the state's massive electricity
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transmission grid.
Power Grid
Incidents
2009
12 NOV; ONS, Brazil
Operador nacional do Sistema Eletrico (ONS)
is Brazil's national system operator responsible
for controlling the transmission of electricity as
well as the operation of generation facilities
throughout the nation. On November 12th, a
hacker gained access to its corporate network
but stopped short of accessing its operational
network.
Several prominent intelligence sources confirmed that there were a series of cyber
attacks in Brazil: one north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005 that affected three
cities and tens of thousands of people, and another, much larger event beginning
on Sept. 26, 2007. The attack in the state of Espirito Santo affected more than
three million people in dozens of cities over a two-day period, causing major
disruptions. In Vitoria, the world's largest iron ore producer had seven plants
knocked offline, costing the company $7 million. It is not clear who did it or what the
motive was.
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Sanjay Goel, School of Business, UAlbany
Smart Grid
Paradigm Shift – Alternate Energy Sources
• U.S. gets only 1% of its electricity from renewable sources
compared to 14% for Germany.
• GOAL: 10% by 2012 and 25% by 2025
• Each household will
have a smart meter
• Allows consumers to
both supply and draw
power from grid
• Two-way power flow
• Two-way information
flow
• Supports conservation
Sanjay Goel, School of Business, UAlbany
Source: Talbot D., “Lifeline for Renewable Power”, MIT Technology
Review, January/February, 2009.
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Smart Grid
Investments
100 Smart
Grid projects
distributed
across 49
states have
been funded
by federal
grants and
industry
contributions
equaling
about $8
billion.
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Smart Grid
where are the weaknesses
• Smart Meters can be targeted
for malware and other attacks
• Homogeneous network of
computers highly vulnerable to
fast moving viruses and worms
• Threats
– Connect and disconnect
customers from grid
– Change metering data and
calibration constants
– Changing meter's communication
frequency.
– Rendering meter non-functional.
Sanjay Goel, School of Business, UAlbany
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Cyber Intelligence
Internet: An Arena for Terrorists
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Cyber Intelligence
“Looking for a Needle in a Haystack”
• Data-mining works when
– Search profile is well-defined
– Significant historical data for
predictions
– Low cost of false alarms
We failed to stop 9/11 despite
having critical intelligence
• In espionage, counterintelligence, or
terrorist plots
– Uncertainty of what data to ignore or
pay attention to
– Attacks often hard to predict (little
past data available)
– Avenues to hide involvement and
communication
– False positives could lead to arrest of
innocents and lost time on bad leads
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Cyber Intelligence
Anonymity of the Internet
• No specific connection between real identity and internet
aliases (can be multiple web identities)
• How is this done?
–
–
–
–
–
–
Anonymous web browsing, e.g. proxy servers
VoIP (e.g. Skype)
Private message boards
Chatrooms / IRC
Use of botnets (to send messages, relay, etc.)
Steganography with website / SPAM images
• Need intelligence techniques for assigning attribution
(means, motives, and opportunity)
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Computer Forensics
Tracking Incidents
• Countless ways in which computer can be used to
perform illegal activity
• Criminals leave behind traces that can be analyzed
– Evidence in several media forms, e.g., text, audio, image,
video
• Multiple sources of data are needed to corroborate
15
Social Network Analysis
Alibaba Dataset
A 12 Member Terrorist Cell --connected with the Ali Baba Network
plans to “bake a cake” (build a
bomb) which will be targeted to blow
up a water treatment facility near
London. The plot takes place from
April to September of 2003
• A Simulated Signal Intelligence
and Human Intelligence
–
–
–
–
Approximately 800 reports.
8 month plot window.
409 named entities.
98 locations
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Robert Savell, School of Engineering, Dartmouith
Open Source Data
Proximity of concepts
• We are collecting data from targeted hacker forums/blogs/
websites
• Natural Language Processing is being used for analyzing
the data
• Process used for analyzing data
– Develop seed list of relevant concepts in domain of interest and
cluster web pages
– Develop concept-concept graph for each cluster of documents, and
use concept co-occurrence distance and proximity filtering to reduce
edge density;
– Identify related communities of concept terms within each resulting
graph component.
– Manually assess each graph “community” and review the sets of
related web pages for information of interest.
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Network Forensics
HoneyNet
• Honeynets are networks of honeypots
where all inbound and outbound traffic is
collected
– Typically runs multiple operating systems
& applications
– Provides real services that closely match
actual conditions in the organization
• Any attempt to contact the network from
outside is likely an attempt to breach its
security
• Any outbound activity is likely evidence
that a system has been compromised.
• Hacking tools can fingerprint honey
pots/nets so they should be camouflaged
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Network Forensics
DarkNet
• Darknet is a portion of routed, allocated IP space where no
active services or servers reside
– Consists of a server that gathers packets & flows that enter the Darknet
• Blocks contain no active hosts, thus traffic must be caused by
mis-configuration, backscatter from spoofed source
addresses, or scanning from worms and other probing.
• Can be used in conjunction with flow collectors, backscatter
detectors, sniffers and/or IDS boxes for further analysis
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Securing the Internet
Conclusions
• Create security guidelines for utilities to
implement
• Design resilience in critical infrastructure
• Security needs to be built into the infrastructure
that we create (Smart Meters)
• Assume reasonable risk and smartly allocate
resources
• Improve ability to detect attacks and respond
quickly (data collection and analysis)
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