Optimizing Vulnerability-Driven Honey Traffic Using Game Theory

Enterprises are increasingly concerned about adversaries that slowly and deliberately exploit resources over the course of months or even years. A key step in this kill chain is network reconnaissance, which has historically been active (e.g., network scans) and therefore detectable. However, new networking technology increases the possibility of passive network reconnaissance, which will be largely undetectable by defenders. In this paper, we propose Snaz, a technique that uses deceptively crafted honey traffic to confound the knowledge gained through passive network reconnaissance. We present a two-player non-zero-sum Stackelberg game model that characterizes how a defender should deploy honey traffic in the presence of an adversary who is aware of Snaz. In doing so, we demonstrate the existence of optimal defender strategies that will either dissuade an adversary from acting on the existence of real vulnerabilities observed within network traffic, or reveal the adversary’s presence when it attempts to unknowingly attack an intrusion detection node. _{This was a collaborative effort between North Carolina State University and The University of Texas at El Paso, funded by Army Research Office.}