Use of A Taxonomy of Security Faults
Taimur Aslam, Ivan Krsul, Eugene H. Spafford · Purdue e-Pubs (Purdue University System) · 1996
Security in computer systems is important soasto ensure reliable operation and to protect the integrity of stored information. Faults in the implementation of critical components can be exploited to breach security and penetrate a system. These faults must be identified, detected, and corrected to ensure reliability and safeguard against denial of service, unauthorized modification of data, or disclosure of information. We define a classification of security faults in the Unix operating system. We state the criteria used to categorize the faults and present examples of the different fault types. We present the design and implementation details of a prototype database to store vulnerability information collected from different sources. The data is organized according to our fault categories. The information in the database can be applied in static audit analysis of systems, intrusion detection, and fault detection. We also identify and describe software testing methods that should be effective in detecting di erent faults in our classification scheme.