An Evolutionary Approach of Attack Graph to Attack Tree Conversion

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Author(s)

Shariful Haque 1,* Travis Atkison 1

1. Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35478, USA

* Corresponding author.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijcnis.2017.11.01

Received: 4 Jul. 2017 / Revised: 23 Jul. 2017 / Accepted: 7 Aug. 2017 / Published: 8 Nov. 2017

Index Terms

Attack graph, Attack tree, Intrusion detection, Attack modeling, Survey

Abstract

The advancement of modern day computing has led to an increase of threats and intrusions. As a result, advanced security measurements and threat analysis models are necessary to detect these threats and identify protective measures needed to secure a system. Attack graphs and attack trees are the most popular form of attack modeling today. While both of these approaches represent the possible attack steps followed by an attacker, attack trees are architecturally more rigorous than attack graphs and provide more insights regarding attack scenarios. The goal of this research is to identify the possible direction to construct attack trees from attack graphs analyzing a large volume of data, alerts or logs generated through different intrusion detection systems or network configurations. This literature summarizes the different approaches through an extensive survey of the relevant papers and identifies the current challenges, requirements and limitations of an efficient attack modeling approach with attack graphs and attack trees. A discussion of the current state of the art is presented in the later part of the paper, followed by the future direction of research.

Cite This Paper

Md. Shariful Haque, Travis Atkison, "An Evolutionary Approach of Attack Graph to Attack Tree Conversion", International Journal of Computer Network and Information Security(IJCNIS), Vol.9, No.11, pp.1-16, 2017. DOI:10.5815/ijcnis.2017.11.01

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