Proactive Defense Through Entropy Injection

The classical model of cybersecurity, which is the creation of high impassable barriers to identify and respond to any potential threat identified by the security agencies, is not working with fluid and sophisticated attackers. To launch and operate long term campaigns, attackers tend to utilize a network with predictable layouts, target architecture and deterministic network configurations. The answer lies in the paradigm shift in strategy of reactive detection to proactive protection by Entropy Injection. Entropy in this case is unpredictable or random. By introducing chaos into the environment, which is always brought in and deliberately introduced, organizations can make the environment they operate in as unpredictable as possible and in so doing manage to make the information they have reconnoitered in the past become outdated the moment they receive it. The critical points of the creation and deployment of an effective, entropy-based defense program are stated in the following post.

Important Elements of your Entropy Injection Program.

Identify Attack Surfaces and Predictability of Baseline System.

First of all, you should single out clearly the natural vulnerabilities of your setting due to predictability prior to installing any form of defense. Carry out a complete audit to list all the fixes: memory allocation policies, fixed IP addresses, standard application paths, default user port etc. Order systems in terms of how susceptible they are to targeted attacks in which predictability is advantageous (e.g., a server with a legacy code that is important to its functioning). What you are doing here is determining the quantity of current level of the baseline entropy of all the major components and where an attacker is most likely certain and, therefore, has the minimal trouble to get it.

Reimburse the Layered Randomization Techniques.

The methods of randomization must all be done in a synchronized mode so as to come up with a great defense in your proactive defense curriculum. At the host level, high-entropy Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and data perturbation can be used to reduce memory corruption exploits. The approach of dynamic IP assignment and port hopping the critical infrastructure must be deployed at the network layer in such a way that reconnaissance by the enemy is a waste. The idea behind such a multi-layered technique is to obscure the critical data points using entropy so as to confuse the network topology and force attackers to guess-attack, and consequently, bring them to an almost complete halt.

Pay attention to Shifting and Short-lived Defense Measures.

Do not rely on the same security measure; and ensure that you have those measures in place that will differentiate the defensive position at any one time. These include complete adoption of the Moving Target Defense (MTD) strategies. These systems automatically generate mutable attack surfaces, e.g. by reconfiguring system settings periodically, by reconfiguring virtual machine snapshots or reconfiguring network paths. This automotive instability and strategy does not allow any data acquired by the attacker at the specified point of time to be used in the next and this makes the preparation of an attack prohibitively costly and time-consuming.

Cyber Kill Chain Leap into Entropy.

Randomness should be introduced at a slow pace and in stages where principle of uncertainty should be applied at all stages of the Cyber Kill Chain. During reconnoitering, there should be deception and noise injection to confuse attackers with useless targets and misleading information. At the delivery and exploit stages, high-randomization of memory with high entropy is performed to destroy the code of exploit. Lastly, after an attacker has established a foothold, process randomization by continuous processes as well as process control flow integrity checking with the means that the attacker can never be certain of his persistence and privilege attack.

Determining the Uncertainty and tracking Attack Signatures.

In order to clarify the fact that this new defense paradigm is helpful, you have to determine the level of performance. The latter will necessitate the rejection of percentages of detection in calculation of the Uncertainty Score- the amount of the complexity and randomness of your world, in comparison to known adversarial models. Record the traces of unsuccessful deeds to attack (e.g. several unsuccessful attempts of brute force at randomized addresses) in the monitor system of the evidence of attacks aimed at compromising the evidence. Monitor these measures to keep on maximizing your parameters of randomization and demonstrate that you are already uncertain with regard to your active defense policy and costing the opponent more to conduct business.

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