Workshop 3 Tutor: William Yeoh [email protected]

Workshop 3

Tutor: William Yeoh [email protected]

School of Computer and Information Science

Secure and High Integrity System (INFT 3002)

Task: Your group is a small newly formed IT Security Consultancy and recently have been employed on your first case

Abraham is a health administrator (MD) but he has no modern technical understanding of IT security issues.

Abraham has had no problems with IT Security until very recently when the Hospital’s network was subject to a series of attacks. In the period of 3 days, the Hospital’s website was defaced, a serious virus infected the Hospital’s e-mail and large quantities of data were corrupted

Abraham wonders why this is happening and he questions whether there is a link to his company’s partnership with a large Health Insurance Company. He is also concerned to find out who might be attacking his network and why.

He is very anxious to grow his business and knows that he needs quickly to implement some security measures so as to pass an external audit (he has had nothing more than some proprietary and outdated anti-virus software until now).

Organisation Structure

W a rren C h anE xe cu tive a ss is ta n t

Ju n io r S ys A d m in

S e n io r S ys A d m in

D o u g las B ro w nC h ie f In fo rm a tio n O ff ice r

M e d ica l a nd N urs in g s ta ff

C h ie f N u rs in g O ff ice r

L u ig i R o ssiC h ie f M e d ica l O ff ice r

F in a nce o ff ice r

F in an ce m a na g er

A d m in o ff ice r

H R M an a g er

M u b a rakC h ie f A d m in O ff ice r

A b rah am W o ngM D

Today’s task

5. How can he protect his network? Currently it is a simple LAN, some databases, a mail server and a web server but he wants to add some E-Commerce functionality very soon. What will happen when his staff use wireless enabled PDA’s for the collection of patient data?

6. Why might hackers be attacking his network; why would they be interested in his company?

He wants to add some E-Commerce functionality, How?

Three Tier Architectures

ERP System

Applications server

Load-balancing

DNS

Router

LAN

Database

Mainframe

Web Server LayerMid-tier LayerBackend Layer

Internet

Webserver

Mail server

DB server

Three-Tier Client/Server• A three-tier architecture builds on the traditional two-tier

approach.• Three-tier architecture usually represents either of :- (1) first tier is the client, the second tier is the Web

server, and the third tier consists of applications and their databases.(2) first tier is the web server layer, second tier is a mid-

tier layer with servers, third tier is a backend layer with backend systems (see diagram)

• Important aspect is that there is another layer between the front-end (request source) and a service layer (eg with applications or databases)

Technologies Suggestion and Justification for e-commerce functionality

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) - partitioning the internal network from the Internet. - prevents outside users from getting direct access

to sensitive data such as database and legacy information

Router - as traffic cop adjudicating and managing inbound

and outbound traffic flow Hardware based Firewall - more hacker proof

Technologies Suggestion and Justification for e-commerce functionality

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) - IDS evaluates a suspected intrusion and signals an alarm Load Balancer - load balancing switches can distribute the load equally among

the servers. -the failure of any one machine does not cause a problem -easy to add capacity in an incremental way Web server - how well it works with the operating system and other servers, -its ability to handle server-side programming, security

characteristics

Technologies Suggestion and Justification for e-commerce functionality

Application server

- J2EE AS, J2EE platform that enables full leverage Java Servlets, JSPs, EJBs and JMS

Anti-virus software

- periodical update of virus definition to protect network and prevent Trojan infections

Mainframe

- very large processing capacity, used to serve distributed users and Web application servers in network

Legacy systems

- the temporary databases from the operations

What will happen when his staff use wireless enabled PDA’s for the collection of patient data?

Nichols and Lekkas (2002) defined four types:

Wireless system with a fixed supporting infrastructure

Wireless system communicating directly through satellites only

Fully mobile wireless data networks Wireless system with no supporting

infrastructure

Threats

Looking more specifically at Wireless PDAs, the threats are:

Jamming Interception Physical vulnerabilities (such as handsets

requiring low-power security measures)

Wired equivalent privacy (WEP) In order for WLAN transmissions to be as secure as LAN

transmission, WEP is part of the 802.11 wireless standard and may be enabled for a WLAN.

It is RSA data encryption travelling in a network as radio waves instead of via cable. It is implemented in the MAC (medium access control) layer of 802.11 which is common to all nodes in a WLAN.

The principal shortcoming of WEP is that the keys are static and must somehow be manually shared between the various nodes of the WLAN.

Virtual private network (VPN) tunnelling

VPN tunnelling is a security measure which may overlay all of this to provide a higher level of security.

It works by creating a secure virtual “tunnel” on top of from the one party right through to their access point.

Q6. Why might hackers be attacking his network; why would they be interested in his company?

Reasons (& who) for hacking: To make profit- prof hackers, selling sensitive

data to third parties

For satisfaction – neutral hackers, to prove their capability

For policy& price setting - Insurance companies, for decision support &profits

dissaticfaction – disgruntled employee, for revenge

Business competition – competitor, may employ hackers/spy, for decision making

Q &A

Group Discussions