Quantifying Mixed Uncertainties in Cyber Attacker Payoffs

Conference · Wed Apr 15 00:00:00 EDT 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/THS.2015.7225287· OSTI ID:1214899

Chatterjee, Samrat; Halappanavar, Mahantesh; Tipireddy, Ramakrishna; Oster, Matthew R.; Saha, Sudip

Representation and propagation of uncertainty in cyber attacker payoffs is a key aspect of security games. Past research has primarily focused on representing the defender’s beliefs about attacker payoffs as point utility estimates. More recently, within the physical security domain, attacker payoff uncertainties have been represented as Uniform and Gaussian probability distributions, and intervals. Within cyber-settings, continuous probability distributions may still be appropriate for addressing statistical (aleatory) uncertainties where the defender may assume that the attacker’s payoffs differ over time. However, systematic (epistemic) uncertainties may exist, where the defender may not have sufficient knowledge or there is insufficient information about the attacker’s payoff generation mechanism. Such epistemic uncertainties are more suitably represented as probability boxes with intervals. In this study, we explore the mathematical treatment of such mixed payoff uncertainties.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1214899
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-106540
• Resource Relation: Conference: IEEE International Symposium on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST 2015), April 14-16, 2015, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1-6
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English