World Security Report June 2014

CYBER SECURITY
CYBER SECURITY
The
importance
of the
Internet
infrastructure
for every day
life.
Every day we read about the single digital market, the importance of a free and open Internet and the need of
trust and security in electronic communications networks. The Internet is an assumed, and for specific services
critical, component of everyday life but yet we still have to develop methodologies to fully assess what are the most
important components from a national and international perspective and how they are structured. This is important
not only in the short term to understand our dependencies on network connectivity but also in the long term to
properly focus efforts for enhancing the resilience of data communication networks.
The Internet infrastructure
is the backbone of the
information society but as
it has become clear in the recent
news, different threats, both
technical and geopolitical, can
hamper its availability. Citizens
expect national authorities and
operators to be fully aware of the
possible interdependencies and
put in place all possible measures
to ensure the security and
resilience of their communications.
To build trust and secure the
future of the information society,
answering the following questions
is becoming increasingly
important:
• What is the Internet today,
how is it organized, what can
we understand from its current
structure, which are the most
important components of it?
• What is a critical service, network
or component in today Internet
infrastructure and how can we
define what is national and what is
cross-border?
• What assets and services are
vulnerable and what happens
to critical services if they are
disrupted?
• How can we enhance security
and resilience of the Internet
interconnections?
Understanding the complexity
of the most complex network
humanity created is a challenging
task. The Internet in 30 years
has changed the way we work,
communicate and interact as
a society and we are still at the
very beginning of this societal
revolution.
It is essential that we are fully
aware of our dependency on
the infrastructure and how it is
organized in each country. This can
also be useful to understand if part
of the assets, belonging to Critical
Infrastructure (CIs), should be
treated with higher requirements
of security and resilience and
the role they play for the global
coherence of the Internet. Any
assessment should be done
from a Critical Information
Infrastructure Protection
(CIIP) perspective and should
involve the Internet operational
community in fostering the
security and resilience of public
communication networks and
in general for the benefit of the
entire Internet. Moreover having
such an understanding could help
every country in establishing a
constructive dialogue with Internet
operators and participate in the
multi-stakeholder discussion on
how to maintain the Internet
globally secure and resilient.
1 Challenges
Every component of the Internet
layers has its own vulnerabilities
and represents a topic of study.
For example
• Physical infrastructure – cable
systems and submarine cables are
critical as well as the dependency
on power supply 1 . Moreover
communications can be tapped or
targeted by specific attacks.
• Hardware – In all the incidents
regarding availability reported to
ENISA in 2012 2 , hardware failure
was the most common cause.
• Software and Protocols – bugs
in protocol implementation and
exploitation of vulnerabilities
as in traffic hijacks are realistic
scenarios.
Looking at the different
components of the infrastructure,
both at physical and at logical
level, the following lists can be
considered as an example
of an initial set of threats that
should be covered in an all
hazard approach (Table 2):
In recent times there have
been several incidents that
can be used as an example
of the threats to which the
infrastructure is vulnerable
(see list below). While these
incidents didn’t affect the
Internet at a global scale
or European scale, the
effects on a local scale
were rather noticeable or
underline the persistence of
known vulnerabilities. They
therefore serve as a reminder
that while the Internet at global
level can be considered resilient,
it cannot be taken for granted
that this is also true for the local
part of the Internet infrastructure
serving a particular region, or
country or involved in a targeted
attack. Even disputes between
private, non-State actors can have
important effects on the local
Internet infrastructure.
Different causes of incidents can
affect the different components:
• Natural disasters and cable
Table 2 – Threats to the physical and logical infrastructure
cuts can affect the connectivity to
specific areas 3 :
• Attempts to block one country’s
connectivity via physical 4 and
network 5 disruption can have
cascading consequences for
Internet users even in another
country due to the cross border
nature of interconnections
• Misconfigurations 6 can cause
temporary and involuntary traffic
reroutes
• Large attacks 7 to specific services
can have repercussions and create
congestion
• BGP hijacks or man in the
middle attacks 8 and attacks to the
DNS infrastructure 9 can be used to
transparently reroute and intercept
traffic or black hole it for a certain
destination 10
2 ENISA Efforts for the security
and resilience of communication
networks
ENISA, the European Union
Agency for Network and
Information Security has studied
the resilience of Internet
infrastructure in Europe since
2010, paying attention to both
the technical and organizational
components. The goal is to
provide Member States with
frameworks and resources to
better secure and ensure the
resilience of their networks. The
“Inter-X: Resilience of the Internet
Interconnection Ecosystem 11 “
study was the first step ENISA
took towards studying this area in
2010. In 2011, it was followed up
with a study assessing technical
(e.g. logical, physical, application
layers, replication and diversity of
services and data, data centres),
peering and transit e.g. Service
Level Agreements (SLAs), as well
as market, policy and regulatory
4 - World Security Report www.worldsecurity-index.com www.worldsecurity-index.com
World Security Report - 5