• ETRI Journal
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.433-445
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• 2020

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a serious attack that targets web applications. According to Imperva, DoS attacks in the application layer comprise 60% of all the DoS attacks. Nowadays, attacks have grown into application- and business-layer attacks, and vulnerability-analysis tools are unable to detect business-layer vulnerabilities (logic-related vulnerabilities). This paper presents the business-layer dynamic application security tester (BLDAST) as a dynamic, black-box vulnerability-analysis approach to identify the business-logic vulnerabilities of a web application against DoS attacks. BLDAST evaluates the resiliency of web applications by detecting vulnerable business processes. The evaluation of six widely used web applications shows that BLDAST can detect the vulnerabilities with 100% accuracy. BLDAST detected 30 vulnerabilities in the selected web applications; more than half of the detected vulnerabilities were new and unknown. Furthermore, the precision of BLDAST for detecting the business processes is shown to be 94%, while the generated user navigation graph is improved by 62.8% because of the detection of similar web pages.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.2512-2531
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• 2014

We propose a new Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) defense mechanism that protects http web servers from application-level DDoS attacks based on the two methodologies: whitelist-based admission control and busy period-based attack flow detection. The attack flow detection mechanism detects attach flows based on the symptom or stress at the server, since it is getting more difficult to identify bad flows only based on the incoming traffic patterns. The stress is measured by the time interval during which a given client makes the server busy, referred to as a client-induced server busy period (CSBP). We also need to protect the servers from a sudden surge of attack flows even before the malicious flows are identified by the attack flow detection mechanism. Thus, we use whitelist-based admission control mechanism additionally to control the load on the servers. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme via simulation and experiment. The simulation results show that our defense system can mitigate DDoS attacks effectively even under a large number of attack flows, on the order of thousands, and the experiment results show that our defense system deployed on a linux machine is sufficiently lightweight to handle packets arriving at a rate close to the link rate.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.66 no.12
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• pp.1913-1920
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• 2017

Software Defined Networking creates totally new concept of networking and its applications which is based on separating the application and control layer from the networking infrastructure as a result it yields new opportunities in improving the network security and making it more automated in robust way, one of these applications is Denial of Service attack mitigation but due to the dynamic nature of Denial of Service attack it would require dynamic response which can mitigate the attack with the minimum false positive. In this paper we will propose a new mitigation Framework for DDoS attacks using Software Defined Networking technology to protect online services e.g. websites, DNS and email services against DoS and DDoS attacks.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.135-140
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• 2015

The WDSS improves defensive capacity against web application layer DDoS attack by using web cache server and L7 switch which are added on the DDoS shelter system. When web DDoS attack occurs, security agents divert traffic from backbone network to sub-network of the WDSS and then DDoS protection device and L7 switch block abnormal packets. In the meantime, web cache server responds only to requests of normal clients and maintains stable web service. In this way, the WDSS can counteract the web DDoS attack which generates small traffic and depletes server-client session resource. Furthermore, the WDSS does not require IP tunneling because it is not necessary to retransfer the normal requests to original web server. In this paper, we validate operation of the WDSS and verify defensive capability against web application layer DDoS attacks. In order to do this, we built the WDSS on backbone network of an ISP. And we performed web DDoS tests by using a testing system that consists of zombie PCs. The tests were performed by three types and various amounts of web DDoS attacks. Test results suggest that the WDSS can detect small traffic of the web DDoS attacks which do not have repeat flow whereas the formal DDoS shelter system cannot.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.157-167
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• 2009

Recently, the leakage of confidential information and personal information is taking place on the Internet more frequently than ever before. Most of such online security incidents are caused by attacks on vulnerabilities in web applications developed carelessly. It is impossible to detect an attack on a web application with existing firewalls and intrusion detection systems. Besides, the signature-based detection has a limited capability in detecting new threats. Therefore, many researches concerning the method to detect attacks on web applications are employing anomaly-based detection methods that use the web traffic analysis. Much research about anomaly-based detection through the normal web traffic analysis focus on three problems - the method to accurately analyze given web traffic, system performance needed for inspecting application payload of the packet required to detect attack on application layer and the maintenance and costs of lots of network security devices newly installed. The UTM(Unified Threat Management) system, a suggested solution for the problem, had a goal of resolving all of security problems at a time, but is not being widely used due to its low efficiency and high costs. Besides, the web filter that performs one of the functions of the UTM system, can not adequately detect a variety of recent sophisticated attacks on web applications. In order to resolve such problems, studies are being carried out on the web application firewall to introduce a new network security system. As such studies focus on speeding up packet processing by depending on high-priced hardware, the costs to deploy a web application firewall are rising. In addition, the current anomaly-based detection technologies that do not take into account the characteristics of the web application is causing lots of false positives and false negatives. In order to reduce false positives and false negatives, this study suggested a realtime anomaly detection method based on the analysis of the length of parameter value contained in the web client's request. In addition, it designed and suggested a WAF(Web Application Firewall) that can be applied to a low-priced system or legacy system to process application data without the help of an exclusive hardware. Furthermore, it suggested a method to resolve sluggish performance attributed to copying packets into application area for application data processing, Consequently, this study provide to deploy an effective web application firewall at a low cost at the moment when the deployment of an additional security system was considered burdened due to lots of network security systems currently used.