Colloquium: Farnam Jahanian

You are cordially invited to attend this School of Informatics colloquium:

Date: Friday, January 23, 2009
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Place: Lindley Hall 102

Farnam Jahanian, University of Michigan, will adress, "The Evolution of Internet Threats: A Case for Security in the Network Cloud."

Abstract:
Threats to the availability and security of the Internet have undergone a rapid and dramatic evolution over the past few years. Highly visible attacks against Internet users and infrastructure began only a few short years ago with the emergence of Internet Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and highly virulent Internet worms. Today, we are in the middle of a fundamental shift from attacks that primarily target infrastructures to coordinated attacks launched from a malicious service platform (botnet) that harvest the resources of infected hosts (bots). Spurred by financial gains or political motives, attackers have become proficient at hiding themselves using compromised hosts as proxies and amplifying the power of their attacks using distributed software. The result is vast numbers of compromised computers, or bots, enabling a rapid increase in spam, phishing, and identity theft. These challenges illustrate how we are at the limits of existing detection and mitigation technologies. This presentation discusses the changing Internet ecology and the evolution of zero-day threats. I will also introduce a new security model for networked environments based on the concept of shifting security services into the network cloud. This framework is inspired by successful detection and mitigation solutions in service provider environments. The key insight is use of multi-resolution distributed sensors deployed inside the network and on end hosts that integrate data from different perspectives to reason about the security of the network as a whole. To illustrate the utility of this model, we will discuss results from two experimental projects that enable security as a service in the network cloud: the Dark Oracle and CloudAV.