Automated Effectiveness Evaluation of Moving Target Defenses: Metrics for Missions and Attacks

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the results of several experiments designed to test two dynamic network moving target defenses against a propagating data exfiltration attack. We designed a collection of metrics to assess the costs to mission activities and the benefits in the face of attacks and evaluated the impacts of the moving target defenses in both areas. Experiments leveraged Siege's Cyber-Quantification Framework to automatically provision the networks used in the experiment, install the two moving target defenses, collect data, and analyze the results. We identify areas in which the costs and benefits of the two moving target defenses differ, and note some of their unique performance characteristics.