TY - GEN
T1 - Herding Vulnerable Cats
T2 - A Statistical Approach to Disentangle Joint Responsibility for Web Security in Shared Hosting
AU - Tajalizadehkhoob, Samaneh
AU - Van Goethem, Tom
AU - Korczynski, Maciej
AU - Noroozian, Arman
AU - Böhme, Rainer
AU - Moore, Tyler
AU - Joosen, Wouter
AU - van Eeten, Michel
N1 - Accepted Author Manuscript
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Hosting providers play a key role in fighting web compromise, but their ability to prevent abuse is constrained by the security practices of their own customers. Shared hosting, offers a unique perspective since customers operate under restricted privileges and providers retain more control over configurations. We present the first empirical analysis of the distribution of web security features and software patching practices in shared hosting providers, the influence of providers on these security practices, and their impact on web compromise rates. We construct provider-level features on the global market for shared hosting -- containing 1,259 providers -- by gathering indicators from 442,684 domains. Exploratory factor analysis of 15 indicators identifies four main latent factors that capture security efforts: content security, webmaster security, web infrastructure security and web application security. We confirm, via a fixed-effect regression model, that providers exert significant influence over the latter two factors, which are both related to the software stack in their hosting environment. Finally, by means of GLM regression analysis of these factors on phishing and malware abuse, we show that the four security and software patching factors explain between 10% and 19% of the variance in abuse at providers, after controlling for size. For web-application security for instance, we found that when a provider moves from the bottom 10% to the best-performing 10%, it would experience 4 times fewer phishing incidents. We show that providers have influence over patch levels--even higher in the stack, where CMSes can run as client-side software--and that this influence is tied to a substantial reduction in abuse levels.
AB - Hosting providers play a key role in fighting web compromise, but their ability to prevent abuse is constrained by the security practices of their own customers. Shared hosting, offers a unique perspective since customers operate under restricted privileges and providers retain more control over configurations. We present the first empirical analysis of the distribution of web security features and software patching practices in shared hosting providers, the influence of providers on these security practices, and their impact on web compromise rates. We construct provider-level features on the global market for shared hosting -- containing 1,259 providers -- by gathering indicators from 442,684 domains. Exploratory factor analysis of 15 indicators identifies four main latent factors that capture security efforts: content security, webmaster security, web infrastructure security and web application security. We confirm, via a fixed-effect regression model, that providers exert significant influence over the latter two factors, which are both related to the software stack in their hosting environment. Finally, by means of GLM regression analysis of these factors on phishing and malware abuse, we show that the four security and software patching factors explain between 10% and 19% of the variance in abuse at providers, after controlling for size. For web-application security for instance, we found that when a provider moves from the bottom 10% to the best-performing 10%, it would experience 4 times fewer phishing incidents. We show that providers have influence over patch levels--even higher in the stack, where CMSes can run as client-side software--and that this influence is tied to a substantial reduction in abuse levels.
UR - http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4e3ed976-99e7-4e35-af5c-aed74c6eeac8
U2 - 10.1145/3133956.3133971
DO - 10.1145/3133956.3133971
M3 - Conference contribution
SP - 553
EP - 567
BT - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
PB - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
ER -