CSC News

Cyber Inception Proposal Offers a Promising Future for Cyber Defense

The growing importance of cybersecurity has been emphasized in recent history by frequent security breaches as well as pitfalls in traditional methods of cyber defense. With the support of the US Army Research Office, Dr. Munindar P. Singh, Interim Associate Department Head & Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of Computer Science, created a project that includes new tactics to get ahead of possible attackers.

The proposed approach builds models of attackers as well as their propensities and characterizes computers, networks, users, and their relationships with interactions so as to enable realistic deception. Frequent security breaches have highlighted both the growing importance of cybersecurity and weaknesses of traditional methods such as firewalls, malware detection, intrusion detection, and prevention technologies. To leap ahead of attackers, we must move beyond passive defense strategies toward a new science of interactive personalized deception for cyberdefense. Our proposed approach involves (1) building models of attackers and their propensities and (2) characterizing computers, networks, users, and their relationships and interactions so as to enable realistic deception. We will develop elements of a new science of cyber deception including metrics for the costs and benefits of trying to deceive an attacker and a modular framework for evaluation of the key deception techniques.

The total amount funded for the project, titled “Realizing Cyber Inception:  Toward a Science of Personalized Deception for Cyber Defense,” is $375,360.  The award runs from September 1, 2017 to August 31, 2020.

~scanlon~