Leveraging software orchestration for reshaping the service graph
Security orchestration is the core element of the ASTRID conceptual architecture, including both service management and situational awareness.

Starting from the descriptive and applicative semantics of a Security Model, orchestration is expected to deploy and manage the life-time of the service, by adapting the awareness layer of individual components and the whole service graph according to specific needs of detection algorithms. This means that monitoring operations, types and frequency of event reporting, level of logging is selectively and locally adjusted to retrieve the exact amount of knowledge, without overwhelming the whole system with unnecessary information. The purpose is to get more details for critical or vulnerable components when anomalies are detected that may indicate an attack, or when a warning is issued by cyber-security teams about new threats and vulnerabilities just discovered.
Decoupling detection from monitoring and inspection
ASTRID pursues a transition from infrastructure-centric to embedded service-centric cybersecurity frameworks.

The main concept is the disaggregation of cyber-security appliances into business logic (i.e., detection algorithms) and data plane (i.e., monitoring and inspection tasks), mediated by orchestration logic and proper security models. Instead of overloading the execution environment with complex and sophisticated threat detection capabilities, efficient processing capabilities are provided in the execution environment that create events and knowledge. Algorithms for detection of threats and vulnerabilities are moved upwards and process such data in a coordinated way for the whole execution environment.
In-kernel processing for fast inspection & effective enforcement
In-kernel processing for fast inspection and effective enforcement

ASTRID designs and develops a software data plane leveraging eBPF and related frameworks. The target is a flexible data plane well beyond the basic monitoring capability today envisioned by flow-level reporting, which includes stateless and/or stateful inspection criteria on flows and/or packets, aggregation and storing capabilities. ASTRID defines the data plane as the logical layer between the user-requested service and the external word, including the virtualization system, network processing elements (e.g., software switches), and hypervisor/operating systems internals (e.g., system calls). Thanks to this broad definition, ASTRID may exploit multiple and advanced programmability features of the data plane to perform monitoring, inspection and enforcing tasks, ranging from applications running in VMs or containers (e.g., LXC), OpenFlow rules, IOVisor and/or P4-based applications.

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ASTRID Installation guidelines - Video and scripts

Astrid publication of the framework installation video on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp8koxA_Zkg

and relative scripts on GitHub

https://github.com/astrid-project/astrid-framework/tree/main/installation-scripts


16-11-2021
Towards 5G Embedded Trust: Integrating Attestation Extensions in Vertical Industries

ASTRID participated in the EUCNC Summit, that was held virtually between June 8th-11th, 2021, in the scheduled workshop on the vision of 6G titled "From 5G to 6G Automated and Intelligent Security"


11-06-2021
Astrid Presentation at "The security of the territory and infrastructures in the digital age"

Astrid Project presentation in "The security of the territory and infrastructures in the digital age" seminar hosted by the Security and Automation Sosia Pole.

https://www.siitscpa.it/it/

Astrid project represented by CNIT Deputy Director Prof. Raffaele Bolla, Ericsson Astrid

07-04-2021
Astrid Presentation to ETSI

Astrid Project goals and outcomes presented to the ETSI CYBER (CYBERSECURITY) Technical Committee (TC) on 13/01/2021.
The presentation was held by CNIT Deputy Director Prof. Raffaele Bolla and the Astrid framework aroused considerable interest.


 


13-01-2021