Analysis of Complex Networks for Security Issues Using Attack Graph

Abstract

Organizations perform security analysis for assessing network health and safe-guarding their growing networks through Vulnerability Assessments (AKA VA Scans). The output of VA scans is reports on individual hosts and its vulnerabilities, which, are of little use as the origin of the attack can't be located from these. Attack Graphs, generated without an in-depth analysis of the VA reports, are used to fill in these gaps, but only provide cursory information. This study presents an effective model of depicting the devices and the data flow that efficiently identifies the weakest nodes along with the concerned vulnerability's origin.The complexity of the attach graph using MulVal has been greatly reduced using the proposed approach of using the risk and CVSS base score as evaluation criteria. This makes it easier for the user to interpret the attack graphs and thus reduce the time taken needed to identify the attack paths and where the attack originates from.