Analyzing Computer Security

In this book, the authors of the 20-year best-selling classic Security in Computing take a fresh, contemporary, and powerfully relevant new approach to introducing computer security. Organised around attacks and mitigations, the Pfleegers' new Analyzing Computer Security will attract students' attention by building on the high-profile security failures they may have already encountered in the popular media. Each section starts with an attack description. Next, the authors explain the vulnerabilities that have allowed this attack to occur. With this foundation in place, they systematically present today's most effective countermeasures for blocking or weakening the attack. One step at a time, students progress from attack/problem/harm to solution/protection/mitigation, building the powerful real-world problem solving skills they need to succeed as information security professionals. Analyzing Computer Security addresses crucial contemporary computer security themes throughout, including effective security management and risk analysis; economics and quantitative study; privacy, ethics, and laws; and the use of overlapping controls. The authors also present significant new material on computer forensics, insiders, human factors, and trust.

“In this book, the authors adopt a refreshingly new approach to explaining the intricacies of the security and privacy challenge that is particularly well suited to today’s cybersecurity challenges. Their use of the threat–vulnerability–countermeasure paradigm combined with extensive real-world examples throughout results in a very effective learning methodology.” —Charles C. Palmer, IBM Research The Modern Introduction to Computer Security: Understand Threats, Identify Their Causes, and Implement Effective Countermeasures Analyzing Computer Security is a fresh, modern, and relevant introduction to computer security. Organized around today’s key attacks, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures, it helps you think critically and creatively about computer security—so you can prevent serious problems and mitigate the effects of those that still occur. In this new book, renowned security and software engineering experts Charles P. Pfleeger and Shari Lawrence Pfleeger—authors of the classic Security in Computing—teach security the way modern security professionals approach it: by identifying the people or things that may cause harm, uncovering weaknesses that can be exploited, and choosing and applying the right protections. With this approach, not only will you study cases of attacks that have occurred, but you will also learn to apply this methodology to new situations. The book covers “hot button” issues, such as authentication failures, network interception, and denial of service. You also gain new insight into broader themes, including risk analysis, usability, trust, privacy, ethics, and forensics. One step at a time, the book systematically helps you develop the problem-solving skills needed to protect any information infrastructure. Coverage includes Understanding threats, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures Knowing when security is useful, and when it’s useless “security theater” Implementing effective identification and authentication systems Using modern cryptography and overcoming weaknesses in cryptographic systems Protecting against malicious code: viruses, Trojans, worms, rootkits, keyloggers, and more Understanding, preventing, and mitigating DOS and DDOS attacks Architecting more secure wired and wireless networks Building more secure application software and operating systems through more solid designs and layered protection Protecting identities and enforcing privacy Addressing computer threats in critical areas such as cloud computing, e-voting, cyberwarfare, and social media

This book discusses automated string-analysis techniques, focusing particularly on automata-based static string analysis. It covers the following topics: automata-bases string analysis, computing pre and post-conditions of basic string operations using automata, symbolic representation of automata, forward and backward string analysis using symbolic automata representation, constraint-based string analysis, string constraint solvers, relational string analysis, vulnerability detection using string analysis, string abstractions, differential string analysis, and automated sanitization synthesis using string analysis. String manipulation is a crucial part of modern software systems; for example, it is used extensively in input validation and sanitization and in dynamic code and query generation. The goal of string-analysis techniques and this book is to determine the set of values that string expressions can take during program execution. String analysis can be used to solve many problems in modern software systems that relate to string manipulation, such as: (1) Identifying security vulnerabilities by checking if a security sensitive function can receive an input string that contains an exploit; (2) Identifying possible behaviors of a program by identifying possible values for dynamically generated code; (3) Identifying html generation errors by computing the html code generated by web applications; (4) Identifying the set of queries that are sent to back-end database by analyzing the code that generates the SQL queries; (5) Patching input validation and sanitization functions by automatically synthesizing repairs illustrated in this book. Like many other program-analysis problems, it is not possible to solve the string analysis problem precisely (i.e., it is not possible to precisely determine the set of string values that can reach a program point). However, one can compute over- or under-approximations of possible string values. If the approximations are precise enough, they can enable developers to demonstrate existence or absence of bugs in string manipulating code. String analysis has been an active research area in the last decade, resulting in a wide variety of string-analysis techniques. This book will primarily target researchers and professionals working in computer security, software verification, formal methods, software engineering and program analysis. Advanced level students or instructors teaching or studying courses in computer security, software verification or program analysis will find this book useful as a secondary text.

"This book provides a valuable resource by addressing the most pressing issues facing cyber-security from both a national and global perspective"--Provided by publisher.

Threats categories, computer security, Risk Analysis, Threats prioritization,Possible attack scenarios, Security policy for the usage of smartphones in the organization premises

Computers at Risk presents a comprehensive agenda for developing nationwide policies and practices for computer security. Specific recommendations are provided for industry and for government agencies engaged in computer security activities. The volume also outlines problems and opportunities in computer security research, recommends ways to improve the research infrastructure, and suggests topics for investigators. The book explores the diversity of the field, the need to engineer countermeasures based on speculation of what experts think computer attackers may do next, why the technology community has failed to respond to the need for enhanced security systems, how innovators could be encouraged to bring more options to the marketplace, and balancing the importance of security against the right of privacy.

There is increasing pressure to protect computer networks against unauthorized intrusion, and some work in this area is concerned with engineering systems that are robust to attack. However, no system can be made invulnerable. Data Analysis for Network Cyber-Security focuses on monitoring and analyzing network traffic data, with the intention of preventing, or quickly identifying, malicious activity.Such work involves the intersection of statistics, data mining and computer science. Fundamentally, network traffic is relational, embodying a link between devices. As such, graph analysis approaches are a natural candidate. However, such methods do not scale well to the demands of real problems, and the critical aspect of the timing of communications events is not accounted for in these approaches.This book gathers papers from leading researchers to provide both background to the problems and a description of cutting-edge methodology. The contributors are from diverse institutions and areas of expertise and were brought together at a workshop held at the University of Bristol in March 2013 to address the issues of network cyber security. The workshop was supported by the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research.

Vulnerability analysis, also known as vulnerability assessment, is a process that defines, identifies, and classifies the security holes, or vulnerabilities, in a computer, network, or application. In addition, vulnerability analysis can forecast the effectiveness of proposed countermeasures and evaluate their actual effectiveness after they are put into use. Vulnerability Analysis and Defense for the Internet provides packet captures, flow charts and pseudo code, which enable a user to identify if an application/protocol is vulnerable. This edited volume also includes case studies that discuss the latest exploits.

Increasingly our critical infrastructures are reliant on computers. We see examples of such infrastructures in several domains, including medical, power, telecommunications, and finance. Although automation has advantages, increased reliance on computers exposes our critical infrastructures to a wider variety and higher likelihood of accidental failures and malicious attacks. Disruption of services caused by such undesired events can have catastrophic effects, such as disruption of essential services and huge financial losses. The increased reliance of critical services on our cyberinfrastructure and the dire consequences of security breaches have highlighted the importance of information security. Authorization, security protocols, and software security are three central areas in security in which there have been significant advances in developing systematic foundations and analysis methods that work for practical systems. This book provides an introduction to this work, covering representative approaches, illustrated by examples, and providing pointers to additional work in the area. Table of Contents: Introduction / Foundations / Detecting Buffer Overruns Using Static Analysis / Analyzing Security Policies / Analyzing Security Protocols