Leveraging Fine-grained Telemetry Data for the Detection and Prevention of Vulnerability Exploits

Leveraging Fine-grained Telemetry Data for the Detection and Prevention of Vulnerability Exploits

Ponichtera, Konrad (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Proksch, S. (mentor)
van Deursen, A. (graduation committee)
Decouchant, Jérémie (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science

2024-06-25

In the modern digital landscape, cybersecurity threats are a significant concern, particularly for publicly accessible computer systems. Vulnerabilities, or flaws in system design, can be exploited by malicious actors to compromise system security and integrity. This paper explores the challenges of handling vulnerabilities in software dependencies from the perspective of system operators, responsible for managing and monitoring infrastructure. The investigation is structured into two main steps. First, a detailed exploration of DevOps methodologies and current vulnerability handling techniques reveals key limitations and areas for improvement. Based on these insights, a new solution is proposed to enhance system operators’ capabilities in terms of awareness, impact assessment, and actionability. To validate the proposed solution, semi- structured interviews were conducted with ten experienced software engineers. The analysis of these interviews, using grounded theory methods, helped to refine the proposed system’s concepts and assess its potential impact on industry practices. In the second step, a fully functional prototype was developed, featuring the ability to monitor and mitigate vulnerability triggers in Java services through instrumentation. The evaluation of the prototype shows that the proposed solution effectively increases the granularity of vulnerability handling and is feasible for practical implementation from the resource utilization perspective.

operator
vulnerability
impact
mitigation
instrumentation
distributed tracing
service mesh
telemetry
grounded theory
coding
usability

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:03f20024-29ed-4091-b884-55447c303233

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11809584 Source code of prototype implementation and experimental setup https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11621468 Transcripts and questionnaire responses from the conducted interviews

Student theses

master thesis

© 2024 Konrad Ponichtera