IDS mailing list archives
RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection
From: "Drew Copley" <dcopley () eEye com>
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 14:09:51 -0700
Apart from semantical differences over the term "host based", there are a wide range of heuristic security applications which provide some degree of protection from zero day. We have, for instance, long used a "class based" system, in SecureIIS, which we have greatly expanded in Blink. We have further added multiple api gating layers and are continuing to greatly expand in this direction. Systrace is an example, among many, of api protection systems. There are many products in this class. Most of them have limited but realistic effectiveness against unknown vulnerabilities. How? They limited their potential destructive influence. In fact, one of our researcher's [now former] did a presentation at Black Hat on breaking some of these systems (Seattle). He showed how a payload could take over a process and spawn new threads, creating an effective sniffer and trojan agent which by all appearances to most api protection systems would be the invaded process -- iis. Regardless, these systems remain our best direction for complete protection. The hardest trick is not in hardening the system -- it is in allowing the system to be completely hardened and regulated and to have it still be usable. Heuristic AV has long been in the running, though, and many if not most implementations have detection properties for zero day attacks. AV generally will not be designed to detect all attacks. The malformed packet coming in, might not be detected, the resulting shell code may be. But, the webpage, email, or IM is very likely to be detected. Heuristic AV has many problems, however. It is "work in progress". I made such an agent -- it profiled binaries by apis they used and certain signatures, such as those for encrypted or packed binaries. Effectively, I was trying to do what I did manually. And, to some success. The reasoning is rather simple, if you look at your most common trojan and malware agents and look for the commonality there. Granted, many virii, unfortunately, do not have any such common api traits... and it is always possible not to use typical apis or apis at all to cause damage. BTW, I mentioned "class based systems". What is that? Ultimately, it fits in with the "commonality" I was just mentioning. There are certain commonalities we can find in shell code, in virii, in trojans. I like to call them "chokepoints", and I like to "gate" these chokepoints. For instance, spyware. A vast majority of spyware uses the BHO registry key. Many use the run registry key on top of that. One can harden these keys and typically detect and therefore eliminate every spyware which attempts to use either of these keys -- they are rare enough outside of the malware world that one might do this. There are many such chokepoints or commonalities to be found which can be used as a guide. The trick is to reduce false positives and keep the system usable. **FYI, I will be unable to answer replies, no offense intended to anyone that might do this. I believe this post was comprehensive.
-----Original Message----- From: Teicher, Mark (Mark) [mailto:teicher () avaya com] Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 12:15 PM To: Drew Simonis; focus-ids () securityfocus com Cc: Seanor, Joseph (Joe) Subject: RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Drew, What host based products would fit this category based on the definition ?? Do they really work ?? -----Original Message----- From: Drew Simonis [mailto:simonis () myself com] Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 01:07 PM To: Teicher, Mark (Mark); focus-ids () securityfocus com Cc: Seanor, Joseph (Joe) Subject: Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection ----- Original Message ----- From: "Teicher, Mark (Mark)" Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 19:47:48 -0600 Subject: Definition of Zero Day ProtectionWhat is Zero Day ProtectionIt is, as you stated, another marketing blurb, but it isn't just that. Usually, this bit of jargon is applied to a detection/prevention system that uses things like heuristic detection techniques, behavior based detection, protocol anomoly or some other advanced methods. These allow the activity to be blocked or alerted on, as opposed to the specific event. So, for example, a worm can be characterized by certain activity. Say, opening connections to lots of remote hosts in a short period of time. This behavior can be blocked (e.g. the process can be killed) even without knowing that it was WormX. hth, -Ds -------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Test Your IDS Is your IDS deployed correctly? Find out quickly and easily by testing it with real-world attacks from CORE IMPACT. Go to http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/CoreSecurity_focus-ids_04 0708 to learn more. -------------------------------------------------------------- ------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test Your IDS Is your IDS deployed correctly? Find out quickly and easily by testing it with real-world attacks from CORE IMPACT. Go to http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/CoreSecurity_focus-ids_040708 to learn more. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection, (continued)
- Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection Ranjeet Shetye (Aug 10)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Teicher, Mark (Mark) (Aug 09)
- Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection Andy Cuff (Aug 11)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Drew Copley (Aug 09)
- Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection Devdas Bhagat (Aug 13)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Fulp, J.D. USA (Aug 09)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Joshua Berry (Aug 10)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Brian Smith (Aug 10)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Teicher, Mark (Mark) (Aug 10)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Brian Smith (Aug 10)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Drew Copley (Aug 10)
- A Network IPS Proposal (was Definition of Zero Day Protection) Shaiful (Aug 13)
- Re: A Network IPS Proposal (was Definition of Zero Day Protection) Johnny Calhoun (Aug 16)
- Re: A Network IPS Proposal (was Definition of Zero Day Protection) Stefano Zanero (Aug 17)
- Re: A Network IPS Proposal (was Definition of Zero Day Protection) Shaiful (Aug 17)
- A Network IPS Proposal (was Definition of Zero Day Protection) Shaiful (Aug 13)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Drew Simonis (Aug 10)
- Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection Stefano Zanero (Aug 11)
- Re: Definition of Zero Day Protection hidsbr (Aug 10)
- RE: Definition of Zero Day Protection Joseph Hamm (Aug 11)