Virtual Cyber-Security Testing Capability for Large Scale Distributed Information Infrastructure Protection

Abstract

Security, reliability and interoperability are indispensable in today's distributed heterogeneous information infrastructure. For government and military applications, it is crucial to conduct effective and efficient testing of security properties for newly developed systems, which are to be integrated into existing information system. Yet little progress has been made in the technology advancement of rigorous and automated security testing. In this contribution we present virtual cyber security testing capability (VCSTC) - a DoD funded project-for developing an automated testing capability that can assess the operational functions and security impact of a target system without physically integrating it into an intended network infrastructure. VCSTC first synthesizes a model to emulate the real network infrastructure; then it automatically generates and executes test cases with guaranteed coverage of the features and security properties under test. This report presents the architecture of VCSTC, its key techniques and experimental results on real systems.