Role-Based Deception in Enterprise Networks

Historically, enterprise network reconnaissance is an active process, often involving port scanning. However, as routers and switches become more complex, they also become more susceptible to compromise. From this vantage point, an attacker can passively identify high-value hosts such as the workstations of IT administrators, C-suite executives, and finance personnel. The goal of this paper is to develop a technique to deceive and dissuade such adversaries. We propose HoneyRoles, which uses honey connections to build metaphorical haystacks around the network traffic of client hosts belonging to high-value organizational roles. The honey connections also act as network canaries to signal network compromise, thereby dissuading the adversary from acting on information observed in network flows. We design a prototype implementation of HoneyRoles an OpenFlow SDN controller and evaluate its security using the PRISM probabilistic model checker. Our performance evaluation shows that HoneyRoles has a small effect on network request completion time, and security analysis demonstrates that once an alert is raised, HoneyRoles can quickly identify the compromised switch with high probability. In doing so, we show that role-based network deception is a promising approach for defending against adversaries in compromised network devices._{This project was also funded by Army Research Office.}