Securing networked systems by protocol dialecting methods

Abstract

Computer systems communicate via network protocols. Since network protocols are homogenous, adversaries can discover potential vulnerabilities of the network protocols and engage the target system with the vulnerable protocol. The systems that use open network protocol standards are constantly under the threats of zero-day attacks. While it is challenging to eliminate potential vulnerabilities in advance, it is possible to minimize the chance to expose the systems to the attackers. In this thesis, we first analyzed the security of the SDN, which has been proposed for integrating many IDS and network-level defenses to thwart the unknown attacks. We found a number of vulnerabilities in inherent SDN design and suggested several mitigation methods that the SDN can improve on. Next, we proposed another approach that can be adopted to the current networked systems. Toward this, we mainly propose Server Ghosting dialecting method. Server Ghosting protects a secret server by hiding its IP and MAC address from any host or router on the network while allowing the authorized users to communicate with the server. We shall focus on illustrating the details of network protocol dialect in the thesis.