Active Cyber Defense Dynamics Exhibiting Rich Phenomena

The Internet is a man-made complex system under constant attacks (e.g., Advanced Persistent Threats and malwares). It is therefore important to understand the phenomena that can be induced by the interaction between cyber attacks and cyber defenses. In this paper, we explore the rich phenomena that can be exhibited when the defender employs active defense to combat cyber attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that shows that {\em active cyber defense dynamics} (or more generally, {\em cybersecurity dynamics}) can exhibit the bifurcation and chaos phenomena. This has profound implications for cyber security measurement and prediction: (i) it is infeasible (or even impossible) to accurately measure and predict cyber security under certain circumstances; (ii) the defender must manipulate the dynamics to avoid such {\em unmanageable situations} in real-life defense operations.Comment: Proceedings of 2015 Symposium on the Science of Security (HotSoS'15

Malware "Ecology" Viewed as Ecological Succession: Historical Trends and Future Prospects

The development and evolution of malware including computer viruses, worms, and trojan horses, is shown to be closely analogous to the process of community succession long recognized in ecology. In particular, both changes in the overall environment by external disturbances, as well as, feedback effects from malware competition and antivirus coevolution have driven community succession and the development of different types of malware with varying modes of transmission and adaptability.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure