The History, Trend, Types, and Mitigation of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Over time, the world has transformed digitally and there is total dependence on the internet. Many more gadgets are continuously interconnected in the internet ecosystem. This fact has made the Internet a global information source for every being. Despite all this, attacker knowledge by cybercriminals has advanced and resulted in different attack methodologies on the internet and its data stores. This paper will discuss the origin and significance of Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). These kinds of attacks remain the most effective methods used by the bad guys to cause substantial damage in terms of operational, reputational, and financial damage to organizations globally. These kinds of attacks have hindered network performance and availability. The victim’s network is flooded with massive illegal traffic hence, denying genuine traffic from passing through for authorized users. The paper will explore detection mechanisms, and mitigation techniques for this network threat.

Event Normalization Through Dynamic Log Format Detection

The analytical and monitoring capabilities of central event re-positories, such as log servers and intrusion detection sys-tems, are limited by the amount of structured information ex-tracted from the events they receive. Diverse networks and ap-plications log their events in many different formats, and this makes it difficult to identify the type of logs being received by the central repository. The way events are logged by IT systems is problematic for developers of host-based intrusion-detection systems （specifically, host-based systems）, develop-ers of security-information systems, and developers of event-management systems. These problems preclude the develop-ment of more accurate, intrusive security solutions that obtain results from data included in the logs being processed. We propose a new method for dynamically normalizing events into a unified super-event that is loosely based on the Common Event Expression standard developed by Mitre Corporation. We explain how our solution can normalize seemingly unrelat-ed events into a single, unified format.

Human-as-a-security-sensor for harvesting threat intelligence

Humans are commonly seen as the weakest link in corporate information security.This led to a lot of effort being put into security training and awareness campaigns,which resulted in employees being less likely the target of successful attacks.Existing approaches,however,do not tap the full potential that can be gained through these campaigns.On the one hand,human perception offers an additional source of contextual information for detected incidents,on the other hand it serves as information source for incidents that may not be detectable by automated procedures.These approaches only allow a text-based reporting of basic incident information.A structured recording of human delivered information that also provides compatibility with existing SIEM systems is still missing.In this work,we propose an approach,which allows humans to systematically report perceived anomalies or incidents in a structured way.Our approach furthermore supports the integration of such reports into analytics systems.Thereby,we identify connecting points to SIEM systems,develop a taxonomy for structuring elements reportable by humans acting as a security sensor and develop a structured data format to record data delivered by humans.A prototypical human-as-a-security-sensor wizard applied to a real-world use-case shows our proof of concept.

Human-as-a-security-sensor for harvesting threat intelligence

Humans are commonly seen as the weakest link in corporate information security.This led to a lot of effort being put into security training and awareness campaigns,which resulted in employees being less likely the target of successful attacks.Existing approaches,however,do not tap the full potential that can be gained through these campaigns.On the one hand,human perception offers an additional source of contextual information for detected incidents,on the other hand it serves as information source for incidents that may not be detectable by automated procedures.These approaches only allow a text-based reporting of basic incident information.A structured recording of human delivered information that also provides compatibility with existing SIEM systems is still missing.In this work,we propose an approach,which allows humans to systematically report perceived anomalies or incidents in a structured way.Our approach furthermore supports the integration of such reports into analytics systems.Thereby,we identify connecting points to SIEM systems,develop a taxonomy for structuring elements reportable by humans acting as a security sensor and develop a structured data format to record data delivered by humans.A prototypical human-as-a-security-sensor wizard applied to a real-world use-case shows our proof of concept.