skip to main content
10.1145/2995272.2995285acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
invited-talk

A Cyber Mutation: Metrics, Techniques and Future Directions

Published: 24 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

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.

Index Terms

  1. A Cyber Mutation: Metrics, Techniques and Future Directions

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    MTD '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Workshop on Moving Target Defense
    October 2016
    144 pages
    ISBN:9781450345705
    DOI:10.1145/2995272
    • Program Chairs:
    • Peng Liu,
    • Cliff Wang
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all 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 third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 24 October 2016

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. formal security analytics
    2. proactive cyber defense
    3. security metrics

    Qualifiers

    • Invited-talk

    Conference

    CCS'16
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    MTD '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 9 of 26 submissions, 35%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 40 of 92 submissions, 43%

    Upcoming Conference

    ICSE 2025

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • 0
      Total Citations
    • 474
      Total Downloads
    • Downloads (Last 12 months)6
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
    Reflects downloads up to 16 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media