NETWORK SECURITY
21EC742
MODULE 1
ATTACKS ON COMPUTER AND
COMPUTER SECURITY
PRINCIPLES OF SECURITY
1. CONFIDENTIALITY
2. AUTHENTICATION
3. INTEGRITY
4. NON REPUDIATION
AVAILABILITY
Types of Attacks
4 categories
Interception
Fabrication
Modification
Interruption
Passive attack
Attacker monitors the data transmission
The term passive indicates – attacker will not modify the contents of
the original message.
Release of message contents
When the confidential email is sent from person A to B, We desire that only B can see
the message.
Due to the attack the contents of the message are released to some one else .
Traffic analysis attack
The passive attacker, from the many messages could try to figure out the similarities
between them.
Comes up with some sort of pattern that provides clues regarding the communication that
is taking place.
Analysis of the encoded messages is called traffic analysis attack
Active Attacks
Application level attack
Attacker attempts to access, modify or prevent access to information of a particular
application
Trying to obtain some one credit card information on the internet,
Changing the contents of a message to change the amount in a transaction.
Network level attacks
It reduces the capabilities of the network by number of possible
means.
They generally attempt to slow down, or completely bring to halt a
network.
Sensitive information is modified.
1. Virus
2. Worm
3. Trojan Horse
4. Applets and Active X Controls
5. Cookies
Specific Attacks
1. Sniffing and Spoofing
i) Packet Sniffing
Packet sniffing is a passive attack on an ongoing conversation.
This can be done at two levels:
(i) The data that is traveling can be encoded in some ways, or
(ii) The transmission link itself can be encoded.
ii) Packet spoofing
In this technique, an attacker sends packets with an incorrect source address.
(i) The attacker can intercept the reply If the attacker is between the destination and the forged source, the
attacker can see the reply and use that information for hijacking attacks. (ii) The attacker need not see the
reply If the attacker’s intention was a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack, the attacker need not bother about
the reply.
2. Phishing
● The attacker decides to create his/her own Web site, which looks very
identical to a real Web site. For example, the attacker can clone
Citibank’s Web site. The cloning is so clever that the human eye will
not be able to distinguish between the real (Citibank’s) and fake
(attacker’s) site.
The attacker can use many techniques to attack the bank’s customers.
3. Pharming (DNS Spoofing)
Domain Name System (DNS), people can identify Web sites with human-readable names (such as
[Link]), and computers can continue to treat them as IP addresses (such as [Link]).
For this, a special server computer called a DNS server maintains the mappings between domain
names and the corresponding IP addresses.
A protocol called DNS Sec (Secure DNS) is being used to thwart such attacks.
Fig: Effect of DNS attack
Security Services
X.800 defines it as: a service provided by a protocol layer of communicating
open systems, which ensures adequate security of the systems or of data
transfers
RFC 2828 defines it as: a processing or communication service provided by
a system to give a specific kind of protection to system resources
X.800 defines it in 5 major categories
Network Security 34
Security Services
Authentication
Peer entity authentication
Data origin authentication
Access Control
Data Confidentiality
Connection Confidentiality
Connectionless Confidentiality
Selective field Confidentiality
Traffic flow Confidentiality
Data Integrity
Connection integrity with recovery
Connection integrity without recovery
Selective field Connection integrity
Connection integrity with recovery
Connectionless integrity
Selective filed Connectionless integrity
Non Repudiation
Non repudiation, origin
Non repudiation, destination
Security Mechanisms (X.800)
Specific Security Mechanisms:
Encipherment, Digital signatures, Access controls, Data
integrity, authentication exchange, Traffic padding,
Routing control, Notarization
Pervasive Security Mechanisms:
Trusted functionality, Security labels, Event detection,
Security audit Network
trails,Security
Security recovery 38
Model for Network Security
Network Security 40
Model for Network Access
Security
Network Security 41
NETWORK ACCESS CONTROL (NAC)
Elements of a Network access control system:
i) Access Requestor (AR)
Ii) Policy Server
Iii)Network Access Server (NAS)
Network Access Enforcement Methods:
IEEE 802.1X
Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs)
Firewall
DHCP Management
Extensible Authentication
Protocol
Fig: EAP Layered Context
EAP Exchanges
Components are
1. EAP Peer
2. EAP Authenticator
3. Authentication
server
EAP Fields:
1. Code
2. Identifier
3. Length
4. Data
Fig: EAP Protocol Exchanges
Example of EAP exchange:
Fig: EAP Message Flow in Pass-Through Mode
THANK YOU