Game Theory-Based Approach for Defense Against APTs

Abstract

The sophistication of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) targeting industrial ecosystems has increased dramatically in recent years. This makes mandatory to develop advanced security services beyond traditional solutions, being Opinion Dynamics one of them. This novel approach proposes a multi-agent collaborative framework that permits to trace an APT throughout its entire life-cycle, as formerly analyzed. In this paper, we introduce TI&TO, a two-player game between an attacker and defender that represents a realistic scenario where both compete for the control of the resources within a modern industrial architecture. By validating this technique using game theory, we demonstrate that Opinion Dynamics consists in an effective first measure to deter and minimize the impact of an APT against the infrastructure in most cases. To achieve this, both attacker and defense models are formalized and an equitable score system is applied, to latter run several simulation test cases with different strategies and network configurations.