Assessing System Performance Impact of Security Attacks

• US 20120174231A1
• Filed: 07/08/2011
• Published: 07/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/04/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Siemens AG
• Original Assignee: Siemens Corp. (Siemens AG)
• Inventors: Avritzer, Alberto
• Granted Patent: US 8,832,839 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/25
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/00 Error detection; Error correction; Monitoring error detection, correction or monitoring in information storage based on relative movement between record carrier and transducer G11B20/18; monitoring, i.e. supervising the progress of recording or reproducing G11B27/36; in static stores G11C29/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/00 Security arrangements for protecting computers, components thereof, programs or data against unauthorised activity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management

Abstract

A method for assessing an impact of a security attack on a system includes defining a system affecting metric for an observation period as a fraction of time the system satisfies a defined specification, defining a resource failure based model and a resource usage based model for the system, obtaining results for each of a plurality of states of the resource failure based model and the resource usage based model, solving the resource failure based model and the resource usage based model and obtaining a term fraction of time each model spends on each of the plurality of states, obtaining a state probability according to the term fraction, and obtaining a measure of the system affecting metric according to the state probability.

Claims

1. A method for assessing an impact of a security attack on a system comprises:

defining a system affecting metric for an observation period as a fraction of time the system satisfies a defined specification;

defining a resource failure based model and a resource usage based model for the system;

obtaining results for each of a plurality of states of the resource failure based model and the resource usage based model;

solving the resource failure based model and the resource usage based model and obtaining a term fraction of time each model spends on each of the plurality of states;

obtaining a state probability according to the term fraction; and

obtaining a measure of the system affecting metric according to the state probability.

2. The method of claims 1, wherein the system reliability metric is conditioned on an occurrence of the security attack on the system.

3. The method of claims 1, wherein the results convey a number of resources used in the resource usage based model.

4. The method of claims 1, wherein the results convey a number of resources failed in the resource failure based model.

5. The method of claims 1, further comprising a plurality of resource failure based models, wherein each model is associated with a corresponding resource configuration.

6. The method of claims 1, wherein obtaining the system reliability metric further comprises summing the states for a plurality of system performance requirements.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the system reliability metric measures performance as accuracy.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the accuracy is a measure of pass/fail criteria determined for each state of the resource usage models for a defined failure configuration.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the system reliability metric measures performance as efficiency.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the efficiency is a measure of a derivation of a security test suite including the security attack.

11. A system for assessing an impact of a security attack comprising:

a processor configured to obtain a measure of a system affecting metric for an observation period as a fraction of time the system satisfies a defined specification according to a state probability by defining a resource failure based Markov chain and a resource usage based Markov chain for the system, obtaining results for each of a plurality of states of the resource failure based Markov chain and the resource usage based Markov chain, solving the resource failure based Markov chain and the resource usage based Markov chain and obtaining a term fraction of time each Markov chain spends on each state, obtaining a Markov state probability; and

obtaining a measure of the system affecting metric according to the state probability; and

a memory configured to store the measure of a system affecting metric.

12. The system of claims 11, wherein the system reliability metric is conditioned on an occurrence of the security attack on the system.

13. The system of claims 11, wherein the results convey a number of resources used in the resource usage based model.

14. The system of claims 11, wherein the results convey a number of resources failed in the resource failure based model.

15. The system of claims 11, further comprising a plurality of resource failure based models, wherein each model is associated with a corresponding resource configuration.

16. The system of claims 11, wherein obtaining the system reliability metric further comprises summing the states for a plurality of system performance requirements.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the system reliability metric measures performance as accuracy.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the accuracy is a measure of pass/fail criteria determined for each state of the resource usage models for a defined failure configuration.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein the system reliability metric measures performance as efficiency.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the efficiency is a measure of a derivation of a security test suite including the security attack.

21. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions executable by a processor to performed method for assessing an impact of a security attack on a system, the method comprising:

defining a system affecting metric for an observation period as a fraction of time the system satisfies a defined specification;

defining a resource failure based model and a resource usage based model for the system;

obtaining results for each of a plurality of states of the resource failure based model and the resource usage based model;

solving the resource failure based model and the resource usage based model and obtaining a term fraction of time each model spends on each of the plurality of states;

obtaining a state probability according to the term fraction; and

obtaining a measure of the system affecting metric according to the state probability.