Investigating the Application of Moving Target Defenses to Network Security

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary design for a moving-target defense \201MTD\202 for computer networks to combat an attacker?s asymmetric advantage. The MTD system reasons over a set of abstract models that capture the network?s configuration and its operational and security goals to select adaptations that maintain the operational integrity of the network. The paper examines both a simple \201purely random\202 MTD system as well as an intelligent MTD system that uses attack indicators to augment adaptation selection. A set of simulation-based experiments show that such an MTD system may in fact be able to reduce an attacker?s success likelihood. These results are a preliminary step towards understanding and quantifying the impact of MTDs on computer networks.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA583400

Entities

People

  • Alex Bardas
  • Anoop Singhal
  • Rui Zhuang
  • Scott A. Deloach
  • Su Zhang
  • Xinming Ou

Organizations

  • Kansas State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Network Security
  • Computer Networks
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Defense Systems
  • Detectors
  • Moving Target Defense
  • Moving Targets
  • Network Architecture
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Topology
  • Networks
  • Security
  • Simulations
  • Simulators
  • Targets
  • Time Intervals

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Cyber