MITHRIL: Adaptable Security Enhancements for Survivability in Collaborative Computing Centers
Collaborative scientific computing sites have large distributed user communities, spread both geographically (over the globe) and administratively. A constant threat to these computing sites is the compromise of the end systems of their users. When such a compromise occurs, a typical repercussion is that user credentials (e.g., SSH keys or passwords) stored or used on that system will be captured by the attacker and used to gain illicit access to the computing site.

Under normal day-to-day operation, production security teams at the computing sites handle a continuous small number of account compromises caused by compromise of these user systems by manually detecting such compromises (via monitoring of audit logs), revoking compromised credentials, and working with the end user and their administrators to restore integrity to the compromised system. However, incidents can occur in which attackers compromise such a large number of user end systems that site security personnel are unable to keep up with the process of detecting their compromise and arranging the restoration of their integrity. In the case of one such attack, many sites were forced to take their own systems or even their entire site off the net due to their inability to maintain integrity.

A natural reaction to this situation is to raise the level of security at sites to higher levels that would be sufficient to provide protection from large-scale attacks. This is akin to establishing a security perimeter around a hazardous area and allows only limited, authorized personnel to enter the area to respond to the hazard and to enable continuity of essential services. However, this brings with it significant costs, in terms of both purchasing and supporting new technologies, and decreased usability for users.

MITHRIL focuses on survivability--the ability for a site to continue to operate and serve customers in the face of an overwhelming cyberterrorist attack. The project's goal is to research and develop heightened security mechanisms that temporarily reduce the level of service at a given site while raising its level of security. The result: a set of integrated security enhancements that not only increases day-to-day security, but also allows dynamic, temporary adaptations in security in response to a heightened level of threat. These enhancements will allow a site to maintain a high-level of openness and usability during normal periods of operation, but respond quickly to increased threat levels with increased security, while still continuing to serve key customers.

MITHRIL is a collaboration between NCSA, PNNL and the NRL Center for Computational Science (CCS). NCSA and PNNL will lead the research and development efforts, with NRL CCS providing requirements and evaluations to ensure applicability of our work to NRL. NCSA will provide over management for the project.
 
Project Leads
Jim Basney, NCSA
Himanshu Khurana, NCSA
Von Welch, NCSA
Basil A. Decina, NRL/CCS
Ken Hornstein, NRL/CCS
Joseph Huffman, PNNL

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The National Center for Advanced Secure Systems Research NCASSR) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a multi-institutional cybersecurity research team. NCASSR focuses basic and applied research necessary to develop next generation information security technologies that address national cybersecurity needs. NCASSR is led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).


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