Forensic Token Injection for Network Attack Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current security operations face challenges in tracing and tracking network attacks effectively, as malicious activities often go undetected and untraced due to lack of direct evidence from the malicious source, especially when network proxies cache content.
Innovation Solution
A method that involves monitoring network data packets for malicious requests, creating a digitally signed forensic token with information about the malicious activity, and injecting this token into a response message, which is then transmitted back to the source, providing a traceable audit trail.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If security operations monitor network traffic and correlate against threat indicators, then potential threats can be detected and blocked, but direct evidence from the malicious source remains unavailable for effective tracking
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by injecting a forensic token into the response message before the malicious source can potentially delete or alter its logs. This ensures that evidence is planted in advance, capturing the malicious source's involvement in the attack before any attempt to cover tracks occurs.
Solution Approach 2:
The forensic token acts as an intermediary carrier that bridges the gap between the monitoring system and the malicious source. It embeds evidence information within a legitimate-looking response message, allowing the monitoring system to plant traceable data without directly confronting or being blocked by the malicious source.
2Productivity
If network proxies cache content to improve performance, then network efficiency is improved, but forensic tracking of malicious activities is hindered
Solution Approach 1:
The forensic token embedded in the response message serves as an intermediary that survives the proxy caching process. Since the token is part of the legitimate response content, proxies cache it along with the rest of the message, inadvertently preserving the forensic evidence rather than eliminating it.
Solution Approach 2:
The forensic token is copied into the response message in a way that makes it indistinguishable from legitimate content. This copying strategy ensures that when proxies cache the response, they are also caching the forensic evidence, thereby using the caching mechanism to preserve rather than lose evidence.
3Measurement precision
If a forensic token is injected into every response message, then complete tracking coverage is achieved, but network traffic complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The forensic token is merged with the legitimate response message content, making it difficult to distinguish between actual message content and forensic data. This merging approach allows the system to maintain complete tracking coverage without adding separate overhead channels or protocols that would increase complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The forensic token is designed to be homogeneous with the legitimate message content in terms of format and structure. By making the forensic data look identical to normal message content, the system achieves complete tracking coverage while minimizing the complexity of message processing and analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
A technique for network attack tainting and tracking includes monitoring data packets received from a network for a malicious request. Responsive to detecting a malicious request, a forensic token is created having information pertaining to the malicious request that is configured to be stored by a source of the malicious request and discoverable regarding involvement of the source in the malicious request. The forensic token is injected into a response message, and the response message is then transmitted to the source of the request as a response to the request.