2024/03/27 by Huy Q. Ngo, Ngo, Huy Q., Mingyu Guo +3 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Cognitive Computing and Networks #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Mobile Agent-Based Network Management #Neural and Evolutionary Computing (cs.NE) #Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.18162
openalex publication_date 2024/03/27 · openalex created_date 2024/03/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is the default security management system for Window domain network. We study the problem of placing decoys in AD network to detect potential attacks. We model the problem as a Stackelberg game between an attacker and a defender on AD attack graphs where the defender employs a set of decoys to detect the attacker on their way to Domain Admin (DA). Contrary to previous works, we consider time-varying (temporal) attack graphs. We proposed a novel metric called response time, to measure the effectiveness of our decoy placement in temporal attack graphs. Response time is defined as the duration from the moment attackers trigger the first decoy to when they compromise the DA. Our goal is to maximize the defender's response time to the worst-case attack paths. We establish the NP-hard nature of the defender's optimization problem, leading us to develop Evolutionary Diversity Optimization (EDO) algorithms. EDO algorithms identify diverse sets of high-quality solutions for the optimization problem. Despite the polynomial nature of the fitness function, it proves experimentally slow for larger graphs. To enhance scalability, we proposed an algorithm that exploits the static nature of AD infrastructure in the temporal setting. Then, we introduce tailored repair operations, ensuring the convergence to better results while maintaining scalability for larger graphs.