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Malware resistant networking using system diversity

Published: 20 October 2005 Publication History

Abstract

In the biological world, species are known to ensure survival by introducing variations among individuals of the species, some of which may have superior survival characteristics in the event of certain environmental changes. While not precisely equivalent, networked computer systems also must 'survive' in a rapidly changing environment. In particular, as with its biological analog there are predators in the network world that must be thwarted.This paper shows that in the macro-, as well as in the micro- senses, system diversity is an important tool for network survivability. A malware attack on the Internet can have serious implications for many nodes but is unlikely to cross operating system or server application boundaries and thus to entirely disrupt the heterogeneous Internet.Individual networks that attach to the Internet can be developed using layers of servers, each with a different hardware and/or software basis, to isolate core servers from networked malefactors. Such a topology requires an attacker to employ a wide range of exploits, different ones tailored to each system at each protective layer of systems. This paper demonstrates how the layering technique protects networked systems.

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Cited By

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  • (2022)Diversity-by-Design for Dependable and Secure Cyber-Physical Systems: A SurveyIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2021.309139119:1(706-728)Online publication date: Mar-2022
  • (2017)Software Diversity for Improved Network Security: Optimal Distribution of Software-Based Shared VulnerabilitiesInformation Systems Research10.1287/isre.2017.072228:4(828-849)Online publication date: Dec-2017
  • (2016)Controlling proximity-malware infection in diverse tactical mobile networks using K-distance pruningMILCOM 2016 - 2016 IEEE Military Communications Conference10.1109/MILCOM.2016.7795377(503-508)Online publication date: Nov-2016
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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGITE '05: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology education
October 2005
402 pages
ISBN:1595932526
DOI:10.1145/1095714
  • General Chair:
  • Rob Friedman
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 20 October 2005

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Author Tags

  1. diversity
  2. epidemic
  3. monoculture
  4. network
  5. survivability

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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Diversity-by-Design for Dependable and Secure Cyber-Physical Systems: A SurveyIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2021.309139119:1(706-728)Online publication date: Mar-2022
  • (2017)Software Diversity for Improved Network Security: Optimal Distribution of Software-Based Shared VulnerabilitiesInformation Systems Research10.1287/isre.2017.072228:4(828-849)Online publication date: Dec-2017
  • (2016)Controlling proximity-malware infection in diverse tactical mobile networks using K-distance pruningMILCOM 2016 - 2016 IEEE Military Communications Conference10.1109/MILCOM.2016.7795377(503-508)Online publication date: Nov-2016
  • (2016)Improving sensor network immunity under worm attacksAd Hoc Networks10.1016/j.adhoc.2016.04.01147:C(26-40)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2016
  • (2011)A Study on Certificate Revocation in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks2011 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)10.1109/icc.2011.5962925(1-5)Online publication date: Jun-2011
  • (2011)Defending Sensor Worm Attack Using Software Diversity Approach2011 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)10.1109/icc.2011.5962857(1-5)Online publication date: Jun-2011
  • (2011)A False Data Filtering Scheme Using Cluster-Based Organization in Sensor Networks2011 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)10.1109/icc.2011.5962645(1-5)Online publication date: Jun-2011
  • (2011)Biodiversity: A security approach for ad hoc networks2011 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security (CICS)10.1109/CICYBS.2011.5949388(186-193)Online publication date: Apr-2011
  • (2008)Improving sensor network immunity under worm attacksProceedings of the 9th ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking and computing10.1145/1374618.1374640(149-158)Online publication date: 26-May-2008

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