{"id":{"repo_id":"bradford","oai_identifier":"oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/18672"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/bradford/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/18672","repository":{"repo_id":"bradford","name":"University of Bradford","base_url":"https://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Cyber Attack Modelling using Threat Intelligence. An investigation into the use of threat intelligence to model cyber-attacks based on elasticsearch and honeypot data analysis","abstract":"Cyber-attacks have become an increasing threat to organisations as well as the wider public. This has led to greatly negative impacts on the economy at large and on the everyday lives of people. Every successful cyber attack on targeted devices and networks highlights the weaknesses within the defense mechanisms responsible for securing them. Gaining a thorough understanding of cyber threats beforehand is therefore essential to prevent potential attacks in the future. Numerous efforts have been made to avoid cyber-attacks and protect the valuable assets of an organisation. However, the most recent cyber-attacks have exhibited the profound levels of sophistication and intelligence of the attacker, and have shown conven- tional attack detection mechanisms to fail in several attack situations. Several researchers have highlighted this issue previously, along with the challenges faced by alternative solu- tions. There is clearly an unprecedented need for a solution that takes a proactive approach to understanding potential cyber threats in real-time situations. This thesis proposes a progressive and multi-aspect solution comprising of cyber-attack modeling for the purpose of cyber threat intelligence. The proposed model emphasises on approaches from organisations to understand and predict future cyber-attacks by collecting and analysing network events to identify attacker activity. This could then be used to understand the nature of an attack to build a threat intelligence framework. However, collecting and analysing live data from a production system can be challenging and even dangerous as it may lead the system to be more vulnerable. The solution detailed in this thesis deployed cloud-based honeypot technology, which is well-known for mimicking the real system while collecting actual data, to see network activity and help avoid potential attacks in near real-time. In this thesis, we have suggested a new threat intelligence technique by analysing attack data collected using cloud-based web services in order to identify attack artefacts and support active threat intelligence. This model was evaluated through experiments specifically designed using elastic stack technologies. The experiments were designed to assess the identification and prediction capability of the threat intelligence system for several different attack cases. The proposed cyber threat intelligence and modeling systems showed significant potential to detect future cyber-attacks in real-time.","abstract_html":"Cyber-attacks have become an increasing threat to organisations as well as the wider public. This has led to greatly negative impacts on the economy at large and on the everyday lives of people. Every successful cyber attack on targeted devices and networks highlights the weaknesses within the defense mechanisms responsible for securing them. Gaining a thorough understanding of cyber threats beforehand is therefore essential to prevent potential attacks in the future. Numerous efforts have been made to avoid cyber-attacks and protect the valuable assets of an organisation. However, the most recent cyber-attacks have exhibited the profound levels of sophistication and intelligence of the attacker, and have shown conven- tional attack detection mechanisms to fail in several attack situations. Several researchers have highlighted this issue previously, along with the challenges faced by alternative solu- tions. There is clearly an unprecedented need for a solution that takes a proactive approach to understanding potential cyber threats in real-time situations. This thesis proposes a progressive and multi-aspect solution comprising of cyber-attack modeling for the purpose of cyber threat intelligence. The proposed model emphasises on approaches from organisations to understand and predict future cyber-attacks by collecting and analysing network events to identify attacker activity. This could then be used to understand the nature of an attack to build a threat intelligence framework. However, collecting and analysing live data from a production system can be challenging and even dangerous as it may lead the system to be more vulnerable. The solution detailed in this thesis deployed cloud-based honeypot technology, which is well-known for mimicking the real system while collecting actual data, to see network activity and help avoid potential attacks in near real-time. In this thesis, we have suggested a new threat intelligence technique by analysing attack data collected using cloud-based web services in order to identify attack artefacts and support active threat intelligence. This model was evaluated through experiments specifically designed using elastic stack technologies. The experiments were designed to assess the identification and prediction capability of the threat intelligence system for several different attack cases. The proposed cyber threat intelligence and modeling systems showed significant potential to detect future cyber-attacks in real-time.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Al-Mohannadi, Hamad"],"institution":"University of Bradford","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Awan, Irfan U."],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2019,"date_issued":"2019","date_published":"2019","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:14:20Z","subjects":["Cyber-attack","Cyber-attack modelling","Cyber threat intelligence","Elasticsearch","Honeypots","Cloud services","Attack awareness","Object-based model"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["<a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/\">Creative Commons Licence</a>."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10454/18672","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Awan, Irfan U."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Al-Mohannadi, Hamad"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.accessioned","label":"Dc Date Accessioned","values":["2021-12-08T15:36:35Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2021-12-08T15:36:35Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2019"]},{"key":"dc:publisher.department","label":"Dc Publisher Department","values":["School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"]},{"key":"dc:publisher.institution","label":"Dc Publisher Institution","values":["University of Bradford"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationlevel","label":"Dc Type Qualificationlevel","values":["doctoral"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationname","label":"Dc Type Qualificationname","values":["PhD"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Cyber-attack","Cyber-attack modelling","Cyber threat intelligence","Elasticsearch","Honeypots","Cloud services","Attack awareness","Object-based model"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language.iso","label":"Language (ISO)","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["<a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/\">Creative Commons Licence</a>."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10454/18672"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Cyber-attacks have become an increasing threat to organisations as well as the wider public. This has led to greatly negative impacts on the economy at large and on the everyday lives of people. Every successful cyber attack on targeted devices and networks highlights the weaknesses within the defense mechanisms responsible for securing them. Gaining a thorough understanding of cyber threats beforehand is therefore essential to prevent potential attacks in the future. Numerous efforts have been made to avoid cyber-attacks and protect the valuable assets of an organisation. However, the most recent cyber-attacks have exhibited the profound levels of sophistication and intelligence of the attacker, and have shown conven- tional attack detection mechanisms to fail in several attack situations. Several researchers have highlighted this issue previously, along with the challenges faced by alternative solu- tions. There is clearly an unprecedented need for a solution that takes a proactive approach to understanding potential cyber threats in real-time situations. This thesis proposes a progressive and multi-aspect solution comprising of cyber-attack modeling for the purpose of cyber threat intelligence. The proposed model emphasises on approaches from organisations to understand and predict future cyber-attacks by collecting and analysing network events to identify attacker activity. This could then be used to understand the nature of an attack to build a threat intelligence framework. However, collecting and analysing live data from a production system can be challenging and even dangerous as it may lead the system to be more vulnerable. The solution detailed in this thesis deployed cloud-based honeypot technology, which is well-known for mimicking the real system while collecting actual data, to see network activity and help avoid potential attacks in near real-time. In this thesis, we have suggested a new threat intelligence technique by analysing attack data collected using cloud-based web services in order to identify attack artefacts and support active threat intelligence. This model was evaluated through experiments specifically designed using elastic stack technologies. The experiments were designed to assess the identification and prediction capability of the threat intelligence system for several different attack cases. The proposed cyber threat intelligence and modeling systems showed significant potential to detect future cyber-attacks in real-time."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Cyber Attack Modelling using Threat Intelligence. An investigation into the use of threat intelligence to model cyber-attacks based on elasticsearch and honeypot data analysis"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Awan, Irfan U."],"dc:creator":["Al-Mohannadi, Hamad"],"dc:date.accessioned":["2021-12-08T15:36:35Z"],"dc:date.available":["2021-12-08T15:36:35Z"],"dc:date.issued":["2019"],"dc:description.abstract":["Cyber-attacks have become an increasing threat to organisations as well as the wider public. This has led to greatly negative impacts on the economy at large and on the everyday lives of people. Every successful cyber attack on targeted devices and networks highlights the weaknesses within the defense mechanisms responsible for securing them. Gaining a thorough understanding of cyber threats beforehand is therefore essential to prevent potential attacks in the future. Numerous efforts have been made to avoid cyber-attacks and protect the valuable assets of an organisation. However, the most recent cyber-attacks have exhibited the profound levels of sophistication and intelligence of the attacker, and have shown conven- tional attack detection mechanisms to fail in several attack situations. Several researchers have highlighted this issue previously, along with the challenges faced by alternative solu- tions. There is clearly an unprecedented need for a solution that takes a proactive approach to understanding potential cyber threats in real-time situations. This thesis proposes a progressive and multi-aspect solution comprising of cyber-attack modeling for the purpose of cyber threat intelligence. The proposed model emphasises on approaches from organisations to understand and predict future cyber-attacks by collecting and analysing network events to identify attacker activity. This could then be used to understand the nature of an attack to build a threat intelligence framework. However, collecting and analysing live data from a production system can be challenging and even dangerous as it may lead the system to be more vulnerable. The solution detailed in this thesis deployed cloud-based honeypot technology, which is well-known for mimicking the real system while collecting actual data, to see network activity and help avoid potential attacks in near real-time. In this thesis, we have suggested a new threat intelligence technique by analysing attack data collected using cloud-based web services in order to identify attack artefacts and support active threat intelligence. This model was evaluated through experiments specifically designed using elastic stack technologies. The experiments were designed to assess the identification and prediction capability of the threat intelligence system for several different attack cases. The proposed cyber threat intelligence and modeling systems showed significant potential to detect future cyber-attacks in real-time."],"dc:identifier.uri":["http://hdl.handle.net/10454/18672"],"dc:language.iso":["en"],"dc:publisher.department":["School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"],"dc:publisher.institution":["University of Bradford"],"dc:rights":["<a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/\"><img alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png\" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/\">Creative Commons Licence</a>."],"dc:subject":["Cyber-attack","Cyber-attack modelling","Cyber threat intelligence","Elasticsearch","Honeypots","Cloud services","Attack awareness","Object-based model"],"dc:title":["Cyber Attack Modelling using Threat Intelligence. An investigation into the use of threat intelligence to model cyber-attacks based on elasticsearch and honeypot data analysis"],"dc:type":["Thesis"],"dc:type.qualificationlevel":["doctoral"],"dc:type.qualificationname":["PhD"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:14:20Z"}