A requires/provides model for computer attacks

Abstract – Computer attacks are typically described in terms of a single exploited vulnerability or as a signature composed of a specific sequence of events. These approaches lack the ability to characterize complex scenarios or to generalize to unknown attacks. Rather than think of attacks as a series of events, we view attacks as a set of capabilities that provide support for abstract attack concepts that in turn provide new capabilities to support other concepts. This paper describes a flexible extensible model for computer attacks, a language for specifying the model, and how it can be used in security applications such as vulnerability analysis, intrusion detection and attack generation