Two Scalable Approaches to Analyzing Network Security Using Compact Attack Graphs

Abstract

The compact attack graphs can implicitly reveal the potential threat of sophisticated multi-step attacks by enumerating possible sequences of exploits leading to the compromising given critical resources in enterprise networks with thousands of hosts. For security analysts, the challenge is how to analyze the complex attack graphs with possible ten thousands of nodes for defending the security of network. In the paper, we will essentially discuss two issues about it. The first is to compute non-loop attack paths with the distance less than the given number that the real attacker may take in realistic attack scenarios. The second is how to measure security risk. Two scalable approaches are proposed to solve the above two issues respectively. These approaches are proved to have a polynomial time complexity and can scale to the attack graphs with ten thousands of nodes corresponding to large enterprise networks.