Cyber-ARGUS framework - measuring cyber-impact on the mission

• Autor(a) principal: Alexandre de Barros Barreto
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações do ITA
• Texto Completo: http://www.bd.bibl.ita.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=2866
• topic: Cibernética; Guerras; Redes bayesianas; Sistemas de apoio à decisão; Computação

The use of cyberspace as a platform for military operations presents many new research challenges. Current security techniques are not sufficiently effective in protecting IT systems, as they fail to address the correlation between actions and effects across multiple domains. More specifically, modern IT systems permeate different areas, and assessing their security requires identifying how actions performed in the cyber domain affect the accomplishment of the mission';s operational goals. This thesis proposes a framework that links mission and infrastructure domains to measure cyber-effects on the mission. This framework, Cyber-ARGUS, consists of a C2 simulation environment, along with semantic technologies to provide consistent mapping between domains. Relevant information is stored in a semantic knowledge base about the nodes in the cyber domain, and then used to build a Bayesian Network to provide impact assessment. The technique is illustrated through the simulation of an air transportation scenario in which the C2 infrastructure is subjected to various cyber-attacks and their associated impact to the operations is assessed. The main contribution of this research is a methodology that enables cyber impact assessment in the ongoing mission to be achieved by using only overall effects (combination of effects produced by the attackers and defenders'; plans), without the need to know the enemy';s individual actions. This ability will also be used to generate more accurate relevant defense/offensive plans and scenarios. The environment not only supports the research presented in this thesis, but can also provide a platform to conduct general work on cyber situation awareness.