Computational cyber-security Attacker/Analyst Models

Cyber-attacks threaten our security and impede American business. To counter cyber-security attacks, computational models of the entire cyber-security environments can provide many benefits. With our transition partners, we will create computational models that can play the roles of cyber-attacker, cyber-defender, network users, and network policy makers. Synthetic environments could (1) measure the real security of an organization"s network without causing harm; (2) investigate defenses against new kinds of attacks, (3) project how future attacks are likely to evolve, (4) and support defenders as they struggle to reduce the effectiveness of attacks. To make these computational models, we will conduct cognitive task analyses that are designed to clearly represent the approach that various players take and that are sufficiently detailed to inform the design and development of computational models. For this project, we will be using the computational model Lumen. Lumen is a product of DARPA"s Cognitive Agents that Learn and Organize project. Lumen was chosen because it is a modern procedural reasoning system that can address the kinds of back and forth probes and responses that matches the confrontation between cyber-attackers and cyber-defenders. This project will demonstrate how complex CTAs and computational models can elucidate the ubiquitous threat of cyber-attacks.