FP7: Critical Infrastructure Protection

ideas we have:

Recovery Oriented Computing, Virtualization, and Secutity

Assume that attacks and breaches are unavoidable; focus on how to make systems resilient in spite of them. For instance, extend Recovery Oriented Computing (ROC) ideas to apply to the security infrastructure. What if instead of a company or country running services on servers, having them run on virtual machines (cf. what Amazon offers with its EC2 service) that run on farms and can be brought up and down at will? If something is attacked, we just bring it down and spawn another pre-configured virtual machine hosting exactly the same services... In sort, combine virtualisation and ROC for security infrastructure.

Recent moves in security infrastructure could already be interpreted under this light. DNS root servers have started adopting anycast, in which case traffic from a compromised server will automatically switch to a standby server via BGP.

Coming back to virtualisation, imagine we have an infrastructure that can host fully configured services; e.g., an image of a DNS server, or e-mail server, etc. The server itself runs as an instance of that image. When the image is attacked or compromised, you just bring up another image. This requires:

• A substrate on which the virtual machines will run
• A way to configure virtual machines and package them, so as to be ready for deployment
• A way to interact with the substrate and the virtual machines in order to control their operation

Cons

The marriage of virtualisation and security is not exactly new, see [1] and Bitfrost.

Mapping Critical IT Infrastructures

Develop a way to map critical IT infrastructures. The dependencies are very complex, and therefore you need tools and data to explore what is really critical. Is Vodafone part of Greece's critical infrastructure? Linux? Solaris? MS-DOS? Postgres? So we do a kind of service and artefact dependency analysis, mapping dependencies and criticality indicators/measures not only software but telecom links, hardware facilities, etc. We develop the software and then run a pilot study. Our proposed approach differs from automatic vulnerability analysis, because we follow and explore the effect of dependencies, rather than primary vulnerabilities.

How do we measure criticality? I can come up with two dimensions:

1. The amount of infrastructure affected. If we map the infrastructure on a graph, it is clear that some nodes are more central than others. This has been explored at length in scale-free networks research, providing grounding why the internet is vulnerable to targeted attacks.
2. The exact effects on the affected infrastructure. A slight performance degradation is not the same as a crash.

In software, it has long since been observed that not all bugs are worth fixing, as they may never produce a failure. This observations may extend to whole security infrastructures, and perhaps this is what we are aiming at here?

Web Applications Security

(iii) Web applications security is constantly gaining the interest of research community, as the existence of web applications is getting ubiquitous, and new threats to the critical infrastructure are introduced. Ajax security, XSS, CSRF, to name a few, even traditional security people fail to understand and protect against these, or new attack vectors created by the complex nature of web applications. What I see missing is a well defined framework and/or the static analysis tools required to test applications and find vulnerabilities. Discovering and fixing such vulnerabilities is a great move towards more secure infrastructure. (mgogoulos)

Are you talking about some kind of Web 2.0 Security Infrastructure here? Not necessarily, web application security issues affects all web services, but since Web 2.0 technologies are more complicated our work can be valuable to either traditional Web or Web 2.

Cons

There is an interest lately in related matters, e.g., AJAX security, see [2]. How do we differentiate from that?

A PROactive Malware Identification System (PROMIS) based on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Recent worm epidemics proved beyond any doubt that the existing centralized worm containment mechanisms are no longer adequate to protect vulnerable systems, resulting in a shift towards distributed cooperative systems that aim to safeguard and immunize the susceptible population by automatically vaccinating them. We present PROMIS, a P2P based algorithm that provides its participants with early information regarding the existence of a worm epidemic and lets them automatically adjust their security level. We argue that our approach is based on the principles of hygiene: taking the basic precautions to avoid infection when an epidemic is on the rise.

The homogeneity of most computer systems offers some significant benefits, regarding portability and the standardization of software development. On the other hand highly homogenous environments make easy for rapid malcode to propagate in less time than any traditional reaction is possible. Probably we should pay more attention to the security disadvantages of that approach and start looking for other means to diminish these effects.

Fortunately, we see a more balanced choice of software and hardware in critical infrastructures. In that case a system that is not vulnerable to a specific type of malware attack, can extract valuable information regarding the attack mechanisms of the specific attack and pass them to rest of the systems, before these systems get compromised. The systems, which participate in our proposed P2P network can thereafter, apply automatically, some predefined countermeasures, (disabling the HTML preview in their e-mail clients or increasing the security settings of their browser etc) in order to avoid the consequences of a forthcoming malware epidemic. We argue that our approach is based on the principles of hygiene: taking the basic precautions to avoid infection when an epidemic is on the rise.

The general architecture of the PROMIS system can be found here

Call Details: Objective ICT-SEC-2007.1.7: Critical Infrastructure Protection (Joint Call between ICT and Security Themes FP7-ICT-SEC-2007-1)

The interoperability and interconnectivity of supply systems is one of the cornerstones of the functioning of our societies. The vulnerabilities in the intercommunication of systems, equipment, services and processes and their resilience against malicious attacks of terrorism and (organised) crime are elementary to the security of the citizens. The objective of the joint call is to make key infrastructures of modern life, such as energy production sites and transmission systems, storage and distribution, information and communication networks, sensitive manufacturing plants, banking and finance, healthcare, or transportation systems more secure and dependable. The aim is to protect such critical infrastructures that can be damaged, destroyed or disrupted by deliberate acts of terrorism, natural disasters, negligence, mismanagements, accidents, computer hacking, criminal activity and malicious behaviour and to safeguard them against incidents, malfunctions and failures. The joint call is structured around two specific foci.

1 Focus of the ICT Theme

The first focus is called for by the ICT theme and is addressing technology building blocks for creating, monitoring and managing secure, resilient and always available information infrastructures that link critical infrastructures so that they survive malicious attacks or accidental failures, guarantee integrity of data and continuous provision of responsive and trustworthy services, and support dynamically varying trust requirements. This includes:

a) Understanding and managing the interactions and complexity of interdependent critical infrastructures; mastering their vulnerabilities; preventing against cascading effects; providing recovery and continuity in critical scenarios (including research towards designing and building self-adapted and self-healing complex systems); security and dependability metrics and assurance methods for quantifying infrastructure interdependencies.

b) Designing and developing secure and resilient networked and distributed information and process control systems; systemic risk analysis and security configuration and management of critical information infrastructures and dynamic assurance frameworks for interconnecting them with critical infrastructures; availability of security forensics.

c) Developing longer term visions and research roadmaps; metrics and benchmarks for comparative evaluation in support of certification and standardisation; international cooperation and co-ordination with developed countries; coordination with related national or regional programmes or initiatives.

Funding schemes: a) and b): CP (STREP only); c) CSA

2 Focus of the Security Theme

The second focus is called for by the Security theme13 and is addressing technology building blocks for creating, monitoring and managing secure, resilient and always available transport and energy infrastructures that survive malicious attacks or accidental failures and guaranteeing continuous provision of services. The following topics are called:

Topic ICT-SEC-2007-1.0-01: Risk assessment and contingency planning for interconnected transport or energy networks

Technical content / scope: The task is to develop integrated frameworks and agreed, common methodologies for (a) global analyses and assessment of risks, failures and vulnerabilities of transport or energy infrastructures, and (b) management and contingency planning based on the compilation and analyses of emergency plans, to ensure interoperability between interconnected and interdependent heterogeneous transport or energy infrastructures.

Funding scheme(s): Collaborative project and Coordination and support action (aiming at supporting research activities).

Topic ICT-SEC-2007-1.0-02: Modelling and simulation for training

Technical content / scope: Security crises concerning cross-border interconnected European transport or energy infrastructures can lead to effects with high impacts of disruption. The task consists of modelling & simulation including scenario building for handling security incidents to support the training of crisis managers.

Funding scheme(s): Collaborative project.

Topic ICT-SEC-2007-1.0-03: Optimised situational awareness through intelligent surveillance of interconnected transport or energy infrastructures

Technical content / scope: The task consists of developing tools that integrate smart surveillance information from interconnected and heterogeneous transport or energy infrastructures in order to build up high-level situation awareness. The objective is to enable optimized decision-making required for cross-border interoperable crisis management to ensure secure, resilient and always available transport or energy infrastructures.

Funding scheme(s): Collaborative project.

Topic ICT-SEC-2007-1.0-04: ICT support for first responders in crises occurring in critical infrastructures

Technical content / scope: The task consists of developing novel technologies for personal digital support systems as part of an integral, secure emergency management system to support first responders in crises occurring in various types of critical infrastructures under all circumstances. The action has to build upon ongoing research on emergency management, secure wireless communication, first responder technologies, etc. See as well topic SEC-2007-4.3.03 Personal equipment with a view to compatibility and complementarity.

Funding scheme(s): Collaborative project.

Expected impact:

• Significant improvement in the security, performance, dependability and resilience of complex and interdependent critical infrastructures while considering as well organisational dynamics, human factors, societal issues and related legal aspects.

• Reinforce European industry’s potential to create important market opportunities and establish leadership.

• Contribution to establishing, strengthening and preserving trust in the use of technologies for the protection of critical infrastructures. This includes creating sufficient awareness and understanding of all relevant issues for the take-up of their outcome (e.g. regarding potential classification requirements, international co-operation needs, communication and

implementation strategies etc.), in order to ensure acceptance of such technologies by relevant stakeholders.

• More effective protection through enhanced co-operation, coordination and focus across Europe, and contribution to the development and promotion of metrics, standards, evaluation and certification methods and best practice in security of critical infrastructures.

Indicative budget distribution

40 M€: 20 M€ for specific focus 1 provided by the ICT theme and 20 M€ for specific focus 2 provided by the Security theme.

• A minimum of 90% of the call budget is foreseen to be allocated to collaborative projects of a typical size in the range of 2-5 M€ (total cost) and a duration of 2-4 years.

• Up to 10 % of the call budget is foreseen to be allocated to coordination and support actions (CSAs) of an average size of 0.5 M€.

• Out of the Security theme's budget, an indicative 1 M€ is available for international cooperation.

Call

FP7-ICT-SEC-2007-1