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Optimal Defense Policies for Partially Observable Spreading Processes on Bayesian Attack Graphs

Published: 12 October 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The defense of computer networks from intruders is becoming a problem of great importance as networks and devices become increasingly connected. We develop an automated approach to defending a network against continuous attacks from intruders, using the notion of Bayesian attack graphs to describe how attackers combine and exploit system vulnerabilities in order to gain access and progress through a network. We assume that the attacker follows a probabilistic spreading process on the attack graph and that the defender can only partially observe the attacker's capabilities at any given time. This leads to the formulation of the defender's problem as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). We define and compute optimal defender countermeasure policies, which describe the optimal countermeasure action to deploy given the current information.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
MTD '15: Proceedings of the Second ACM Workshop on Moving Target Defense
October 2015
114 pages
ISBN:9781450338233
DOI:10.1145/2808475
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 12 October 2015

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Author Tags

  1. POMDP
  2. bayesian attack graphs
  3. moving target defense
  4. network security
  5. stochastic control

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MTD '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 8 of 19 submissions, 42%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 40 of 92 submissions, 43%

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  • (2024)Learning Near-Optimal Intrusion Responses Against Dynamic AttackersIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2023.329341321:1(1158-1177)Online publication date: Mar-2024
  • (2024)Human-in-the-Loop Cyber Intrusion Detection Using Active LearningIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2024.343464719(8658-8672)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2024)A Comprehensive Survey: Evaluating the Efficiency of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Techniques on Cyber Security SolutionsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.335554712(12229-12256)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2024)Optimal Joint Defense and Monitoring for Networks Security under Uncertainty: A POMDP-Based ApproachIET Information Security10.1049/2024/79667132024(1-20)Online publication date: 27-May-2024
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  • (2024)Evaluation of a Red Team Automation Tool in Live Cyber Defence ExercisesICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection10.1007/978-3-031-56326-3_13(177-190)Online publication date: 24-Apr-2024
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