Modeling of Cyber Behaviors to Wargame and Assess Risk (MOC-WAR)

Adversaries are becoming ever more proficient at cyber attacks against our military"s infrastructure, making offensive and defensive cyber operations an essential component of today"s military activities. While the Navy has focused significant resources on cyber defense, these operations are largely reactive in nature, addressing events after the initial attack. Augmenting our cyber defense with proactive tools to analyze the goals and decision-making processes of adversaries will enable cyber defenders to shape the battlespace, limiting, and even driving, adversary options and reducing the threat on our infrastructure. To do this, cyber defenders need to understand the motivations, goals, behaviors, and limitations of those adversaries, and how those factors interact with policies, users, and defenses. To address these needs, we propose a Phase I effort to design and demonstrate a system for Modeling Cyber Behaviors to Wargame and Assess Risk (MOC-WAR). MOC-WAR provides a hybrid, modular behavior modeling framework to construct flexible adversary, defender, user, and policy maker models that can be rapidly updated as adversary strategies evolve. Using these models, MOC-WAR provides simulation engines and analysis tools that allow analysts and defenders to wargame behavioral interactions with adversaries, and proactively select policies and defenses that minimize adversary threats.