Biblio

With the development of technology, the invention of computers, the use of cyberspace created by information communication systems and networks, increasing the effectiveness of knowledge in all aspects and the gains it provides have increased further the importance of cyber security day by day. In parallel with the developments in cyber space, the need for cyber defense has emerged with active and passive defense approaches for cyber security against internal and external cyber-attacks of increasing type, severity and complexity. In this framework, proactive cyber defense and deterrence strategies have started to be implemented with new techniques and methods.

Moving target defense(MTD) is a typical proactive cyber defense technology, which not only increases the difficulty of the attacker, but also reduces the damage caused by successful attacks. A number of studies have assessed the defensive effectiveness of MTD, but only focus on increasing the difficulty of attacks. No studies have been conducted to assess the impact of successful attacks on the network. In this paper, we propose a probability model that evaluates the impact of MTD against subsequent stages of complete attack process. The model quantify the probability distribution of the number of compromised hosts. The results of simulation show that MTD can reduce the number of compromised hosts, and attackers cannot control all hosts.

After decades of cyber warfare, it is well-known that the static and predictable behavior of cyber configuration provides a great advantage to adversaries to plan and launch their attack successfully. At the same time, as cyber attacks are getting highly stealthy and more sophisticated, their detection and mitigation become much harder and expensive. We developed a new foundation for moving target defense (MTD) based on cyber mutation, as a new concept in cybersecurity to reverse this asymmetry in cyber warfare by embedding agility into cyber systems. Cyber mutation enables cyber systems to automatically change its configuration parameters in unpredictable, safe and adaptive manner in order to proactively achieve one or more of the following MTD goals: (1) deceiving attackers from reaching their goals, (2) disrupting their plans via changing adversarial behaviors, and (3) deterring adversaries by prohibitively increasing the attack effort and cost. In this talk, we will present the formal foundations, metrics and framework for developing effective cyber mutation techniques. The talk will also review several examples of developed techniques including Random Host Mutation, Random Rout Mutation, fingerprinting mutation, and mutable virtual networks. The talk will also address the evaluation and lessons learned for advancing the future research in this area.