Discovery and Codification of Web Services Vulnerabilities (abstract)

XML is an increasingly popular standard for exchanging data, which owes much of its popularity to its ability to facilitate interoperability among applications. While this has the advantage of reducing duplication of effort in distributed applications development, it also creates numerous opportunities for security vulnerabilities to appear. As the industry increasingly relies on XML applications, the discovery of potential vulnerabilities and development of new threat detection mechanisms becomes critical. This paper summarizes the results of a research project in the area of XML intrusion detection. Using a previously developed XIP attack threat model for XML attacks (i.e., attacks targeting XML applications), a number of known attacks were implemented, tested, and codified, and attack-specific signatures were developed. The approach and results are discussed both as the basis for a system of testing the effectiveness of XML attacks and the foundation for intrusion detection system.

To be published