Attackers use advanced techniques to conceal their communication in an SSL connection. And, to detect and prevent those attacks we need to look through an encrypted SSL connection and find out malicious contents. SSL Inspection is a technology using which encrypted SSL traffic can be decrypted and sent to other security appliances, that can analyze the traffic further to detect harmful contents and prevent possible damages.

How do attackers use encrypted communications?

If malicious communications are not encrypted, they can be detected by standard security appliances like IDS, IPS, firewalls easily. But, these security tools are not able to decrypt an encrypted connection and look through it. So, many a time attackers take advantage of that to make attacks. They use SSL connections to conceal their malicious communication.

  • If the initial communication for infection is through an approved port and a seemingly secured browser, it can bypass the firewall/IPS easily. In fact, it is easier to attack an organization using applications that use encryption.
  • Many a time attackers infect computers with malware and create a botnet. Then they exploit the computational resources of the infected computers for malicious purposes like making DDoS attacks, spreading malware, or for more attacks. For malware families like Zeus, the communication with the Command & Control Server of the botnet is concealed within an SSL connection. The malware first opens an SSL connection and then uses that for communication with the Command & Control Server for sending stolen sensitive data of the victims.
  • An attacker can use Cross-Site Scripting or XSS attack (How do attackers perpetrate a Cross-Site Scripting Attack ? ) to steal authentication cookie of a victim and send it to the attacker hiding the communication using SSL.
  • Attackers can use SSL for phishing attacks also. They can send malicious links to employees of an organization via emails and trick them to click on them. When a victim clicks on the link, it may redirect the victim to a malicious SSL server controlled by the attackers. If the communication is through some approved ports, the firewall/IPS may not detect it. And, the attackers can infect the computers with malware to create a botnet. After that, they can easily exfiltrate sensitive data like financial account data of the organization using an encrypted SSL connection.

What is SSL Inspection?

Currently, many security devices cannot inspect encrypted traffic, and the few that can decrypt SSL traffic cause significant performance degradation and are very expensive.

SSL inspectors work with secure network gateways to monitor inbound and outbound SSL traffic.

This article is accessible to premium members only. To access this article, please purchase The Security Buddy Premium Membership Plan.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Calculate the pseudoinverse of a matrix using Python

What is the pseudoinverse of a matrix? We know that if A is a square matrix with full rank, then A-1 is said to be the inverse of A if the following condition holds: $latex AA^{-1}=A^{-1}A=I $ The pseudoinverse or the Moore-Penrose inverse of a matrix is a...

Cholesky decomposition using Python

What is Cholesky decomposition? A square matrix A is said to have Cholesky decomposition if it can be written as a product of a lower triangular matrix and its conjugate transpose. $latex A=LL^{*} $ If all the entries of A are real numbers, then the conjugate...

Tensor Hadamard Product using Python

In one of our previous articles, we already discussed what the Hadamard product in linear algebra is. We discussed that if A and B are two matrices of size mxn, then the Hadamard product of A and B is another mxn matrix C such that: $latex H_{i,j}=A_{i,j} \times...

Perform tensor addition and subtraction using Python

We can use numpy nd-array to create a tensor in Python. We can use the following Python code to perform tensor addition and subtraction. import numpy A = numpy.random.randint(low=1, high=10, size=(3, 3, 3)) B = numpy.random.randint(low=1, high=10, size=(3, 3, 3)) C =...

How to create a tensor using Python?

What is a tensor? A tensor is a generalization of vectors and matrices. It is easily understood as a multidimensional array. For example, in machine learning, we can organize data in an m-way array and refer it as a data tensor. Data related to images, sounds, movies,...

How to combine NumPy arrays using horizontal stack?

We can use the hstack() function from the numpy module to combine two or more NumPy arrays horizontally. For example, we can use the following Python code to combine three NumPy arrays horizontally. import numpy A = numpy.array([[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9]]) B =...

How to combine NumPy arrays using vertical stack?

Let’s say we have two or more NumPy arrays. We can combine these NumPy arrays vertically using the vstack() function from the numpy module. For example, we can use the following Python code to combine three NumPy arrays vertically. import numpy A = numpy.array([[1, 2,...

Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) using Python

What is Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)? Let A be an mxn rectangular matrix. Using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), we can decompose the matrix A in the following way: $latex A_{m \times n}=U_{m \times m}S_{m \times n}V_{n \times n}^T $ Here, U is an mxm matrix....

Eigen decomposition of a square matrix using Python

Let A be a square matrix. Let’s say A has k eigenvalues λ1, λ2, ... λk. And the corresponding eigenvectors are X1, X2, ... Xk. $latex X_1=\begin{bmatrix} x_{11} \\ x_{21} \\ x_{31} \\ ... \\ x_{k1} \end{bmatrix} \\ X_2=\begin{bmatrix} x_{12} \\ x_{22} \\ x_{32} \\ ......

How to calculate eigenvalues and eigenvectors using Python?

In our previous article, we discussed what eigen values and eigenvectors of a square matrix are and how we can calculate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a square matrix mathematically. We discussed that if A is a square matrix, then $latex (A- \lambda I) \vec{u}=0...

Amrita Mitra

Author

Ms. Amrita Mitra is an author, who has authored the books “Cryptography And Public Key Infrastructure“, “Web Application Vulnerabilities And Prevention“, “A Guide To Cyber Security” and “Phishing: Detection, Analysis And Prevention“. She is also the founder of Asigosec Technologies, the company that owns The Security Buddy.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Not a premium member yet?

Please follow the link below to buy The Security Buddy Premium Membership.

Featured Posts

Translate »