Cyber Attacker and Network Vulnerability Analysis and Simulation (CANVAS)

Modern adversaries have become more proficient at cyber attacks against our militarys cyber networks. Although the Army has expended significant resources addressing threats in the cyber domain, current defense efforts are largely reactive. Augmenting our cyber defenses with tools that proactively analyze the intentions and behaviors of our adversaries and predict the most likely attack vectors on the network can enable cyber defenders to aggressively manipulate those adversaries, alleviating the manual analytic burden on cyber specialists and increasing the resilience of our network infrastructure. To manipulate adversaries, cyber defenders must understand the intentions, behaviors, and limitations of those adversaries, and how those factors interact with attack vectors and defenses. To address these needs, in Phase I we designed and demonstrated the feasibility of a system for Cyber Attacker and Network Vulnerability Analysis and Simulation (CANVAS). CANVAS is a tool for the analysis of cyber vulnerabilities and proactive development of defense strategies. CANVAS enables cyber defenders and policy makers to wargame adaptive models of attacker intentions and behaviors on a simulated network to provide predictive analysis of attacks for cyber situation awareness and make defensive recommendations. Based on our Phase I success, we recommend a Phase II effort to develop and evaluate a full-scope CANVAS system.