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Propagating Mixed Uncertainties in Cyber Attacker Payoffs: Exploration of Two-Phase Monte Carlo Sampling and Probability Bounds Analysis

Conference ·

Securing cyber-systems on a continual basis against a multitude of adverse events is a challenging undertaking. Game-theoretic approaches, that model actions of strategic decision-makers, are increasingly being applied to address cybersecurity resource allocation challenges. Such game-based models account for multiple player actions and represent cyber attacker payoffs mostly as point utility estimates. Since a cyber-attacker’s payoff generation mechanism is largely unknown, appropriate representation and propagation of uncertainty is a critical task. In this paper we expand on prior work and focus on operationalizing the probabilistic uncertainty quantification framework, for a notional cyber system, through: 1) representation of uncertain attacker and system-related modeling variables as probability distributions and mathematical intervals, and 2) exploration of uncertainty propagation techniques including two-phase Monte Carlo sampling and probability bounds analysis.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1334867
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-120091
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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