Automatic Vulnerability Analysis and Intrusion Mitigation Systems for WiMAX Networks

1. Automatic Vulnerability Analysis and Intrusion Mitigation Systems for WiMAX Networks Yan Chen, Hai Zhou Northwestern Lab for Internet and Security Technology (LIST) Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Northwestern University http://list.cs.northwestern.edu Motorola Liaisons Greg W. Cox, Z. Judy Fu, Peter McCann, and Philip R. Roberts Motorola Labs

2. The Spread of Sapphire/Slammer Worms

3. Outline • Threat Landscape and Motivation • Our approach • Accomplishment • Achievement highlight: a Mobile IPv6 vulnerability

4. The Current Threat Landscape and Countermeasures of WiMAX Networks • WiMAX: next wireless phenomenon • Predicted multi-billion dollar industry • WiMAX faces both Internet attacks and wireless network attacks • E.g., 6 new viruses, including Cabir and Skulls, with 30 variants targeting mobile devices • Goal of this project: secure WiMAX networks • Big security risks for WiMAX networks • No formal analysis about WiMAX security vulnerabilities • No intrusion detection/mitigation product/research tailored towards WiMAX networks

5. Our Approach • Vulnerability analysis of 802.16e specs and WiMAX standards • Systematical and automatic searching through formal methods. • First specify the specs and potential capabilities of attackers in a formal language TLA+ (the Temporal Logic of Actions) • Then model check for any possible attacks • The formal analysis can also help guide fixing of the flaws • Adaptive Intrusion Detection and Mitigation for WiMAX Networks (WAIDM) • Could be differentiator for Motorola’s 802.16 products

6. Accomplishments This Year • Most achieved with close interaction with Motorola liaisons • Automatic vulnerability analysis • Checked the initial ranging and authentication of WiMAX • Found a potential vulnerability for ranging (but needs to change MAC) • Published a joint paper with Judy Fu “Automatic Vulnerability Checking of IEEE 802.16 WiMAX Protocols through TLA+”, in Proc. of the Second Workshop on Secure Network Protocols (NPSec), 2006. • Checking the mobile IPv6 • Find an easy attack to disable the route optimization !

7. Accomplishments This Year (II) • Sketch-based online flow-level intrusion detection • Mature and ready to be deployed • Motorola liaisons are talking to various groups for commercialization • E.g., recently talked to JoshuaBrickel, John Bruner, and Ephraim Borow in MSG. “Sketch can be used in our DoS attack solution for Verizon Wireless networks or may be used in SLA monitor.” • Automatic polymorphic worm signature generation systems for high-speed networks • Fast, noise tolerant, and attack resilient • Resulted a joint paper submission with Judy Zhi Fu “Network-based and Attack-resilient Length Signature Generation for Zero-day Polymorphic Worms”, submitted to USENIX Security Symposium 2007. • Patent under review by the patent committee of Motorola

8. Automatic Length Based Worm Signature Generation • Majority of worms exploit buffer overflow vulnerabilities • Worm packets have a particular field longer than normal • Length signature generation • Parse the traffic to different fields • Find abnormally long field • Apply a three-step algorithm to determine a length signature • Length based signature is hard to evade if the attacker has to overflow the buffer.

9. Length Based Signature Generator

10. Evaluation of Signature Quality • Seven polymorphic worms based on real-world vulnerabilities and exploits from securityfocus.com • Real traffic collected at two gigabit links of a campus edge routers in 2006 (40GB for evaluation) • Another 123GB SPAM dataset

11. Accomplishments on Publications • Four conference and one journal papers, and one tech report • Hop ID: A Virtual Coordinate based Routing for Sparse Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, to appear in IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing. • A Suite of Schemes for User-level Network Diagnosis without Infrastructure, to appear in the Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM, 2007 (18%). • Internet Cache Pollution Attacks and Countermeasures, in Proc. of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Nov. 2006 (14%). • Automatic Vulnerability Checking of IEEE 802.16 WiMAX Protocols through TLA+, in Proc. of the Second Workshop on Secure Network Protocols (NPSec) (33%). • A DoS Resilient Flow-level Intrusion Detection Approach for High-speed Networks, in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2006 (14%). • Abstraction Techniques for Model-Checking Parameterized Systems, EECS Tech. Report, 2007.

12. Students Involved • PhD students: • Yan Gao, Zhichun Li, Yao Zhao (all in their 3rd years), • Nicos Liveris (4th year) • MS students: • Prasad Narayana (graduating, will work for Motorola soon) • Sagar Vemuri (1st year) • Undergraduate student: • Coh Yoshizaki

13. Outline • Threat Landscape and Motivation • Our approach • Accomplishment • Achievement highlight: a Mobile IPv6 vulnerability

14. Mobile IPv6 (RFC 3775) • Provides mobility at IP Layer • Enables IP-based communication to continue even when the host moves from one network to another • Host movement is completely transparent to Layer 4 and above

15. Mobile IPv6 - Entities • Mobile Node (MN) – Any IP host which is mobile • Correspondent Node (CN) – Any IP host communicating with the MN • Home Agent (HA) – A host/router in the Home network which: • Is always aware of MN’s current location • Forwards any packet destined to MN • Assists MN to optimize its route to CN

16. Mobile IPv6 - Process • (Initially) MN is in home network and connected to CN • MN moves to a foreign network: • Registers new address with HA by sending Binding Update (BU) and receiving Binding Ack (BA) • Performs Return Routability to optimize route to CN by sending HoTI, CoTI and receiving HoT, CoT • Registers with CN using BU and BA

17. Mobile Node Mobile IPv6 in Action Home Network HoT Internet Correspondent Mobile Node Home Agent Node HoTI BA CoT HoTI BA HoT CoTI BU BU Foreign Network

18. Mobile IPv6 Vulnerability • Nullifies the effect of Return Routability • BA with status codes 136, 137 and 138 unprotected • Man-in-the-middle attack • Sniffs BU to CN • Injects BA to MN with one of status codes above • MN either retries RR or gives up route optimization and goes through HA

19. Restart Return Silently Discard MIPv6 Attack In Action MN HA AT CN Start H o T I Return o C T I Routability H o T I T o C T o H T o H Bind Update (Sniffed by AT along the way) Bind Ack Spoofed by AT Routability Bind Ack Bind Ack

20. MIPv6 Vulnerability - Effects • Performance degradation by forcing communication through sub-optimal routes • Possible overloading of HA and Home Link • Service disruption – Communication between two mobile entities can be disrupted if they were already using optimized route

21. Conclusions • Vulnerability analysis of 802.16e specs (WiMAX) and mobile IP protocols • Adaptive Intrusion Detection and Mitigation for WiMAX Networks (WAIDM) Thank You !

22. Existing WLAN Security Technology Insufficient for WiMAX Networks • Cryptography and authentication cannot prevent attacks from penetrating WiMAX networks • Viruses, worms, DoS attacks, etc. • 802.16 IDS development can potentially lead to critical gain in market share • All major WLAN vendors integrated IDS into products • Limitations of existing IDSes (including WIDS) • Mostly host-based, and not scalable to high-speed networks • Mostly simple signature based, cannot deal with unknown attacks, polymorphic worms • Mostly ignore dynamics and mobility of wireless networks

23. Deployment of WAIDM • Attached to a switch connecting BS as a black box • Enable the early detection and mitigation of global scale attacks • Could be differentiator for Motorola’s 802.16 products Users Internet Users WAIDM system Internet 802.16 scan port 802.16 BS BS Switch/ Switch/ BS controller BS controller 802.16 802.16 BS BS Users Users (a) (b) WAIDM deployed Original configuration