“Using Attack Injection to Discover New Vulnerabilities”

From Navigators

Nuno Ferreira Neves, João Antunes, Miguel Correia, Paulo Veríssimo, Rui Neves

in Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Philadelphia, USA, June 2006., Jun. 2006.

Abstract: Due to our increasing reliance on computer systems, security incidents and their causes are important problems that need to be addressed. To contribute to this objective, the paper describes a new tool for the discovery of security vulnerabilities on network connected servers. The AJECT tool uses a speci?cation of the server?s communication protocol to automatically generate a large number of attacks accordingly to some prede?ned test classes. Then, while it performs these attacks through the network, it monitors the behavior of the server both from a client perspective and inside the target machine. The observation of an incorrect behavior indicates a successful attack and the potential existence of a vulnerability. To demonstrate the usefulness of this approach, a considerable number of experiments were carried out with several IMAP servers. The results show that AJECT can discover several kinds of vulnerabilities, including a previously unknown vulnerability.