Anomaly detection of web-based attacks

Web-based vulnerabilities represent a substantial portion of the security exposures of computer networks. In order to detect known web-based attacks, misuse detection systems are equipped with a large number of signatures. Unfortunately, it is difficult to keep up with the daily disclosure of web-related vulnerabilities, and, in addition, vulnerabilities may be introduced by installation-specific web-based applications. Therefore, misuse detection systems should be complemented with anomaly detection systems. This paper presents an intrusion detection system that uses a number of different anomaly detection techniques to detect attacks against web servers and web-based applications. The system correlates the server-side programs referenced by client queries with the parameters contained in these queries. The application-specific characteristics of the parameters allow the system to perform focused analysis and produce a reduced number of false positives. The system derives automatically the parameter profiles associated with web applications (e.g., length and structure of parameters) from the analyzed data. Therefore, it can be deployed in very different application environments without having to perform time-consuming tuning and configuration.