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Real-Time Defensive Strategy Selection via Deep Reinforcement Learning

Published: 29 August 2023 Publication History

Abstract

As computer networks face increasingly sophisticated attacks there is a need to create adaptive defensive systems that can select appropriate countermeasures to thwart attacks. The use of Deep Reinforcement Learning to train defensive agents is an avenue to study to meet this demand. In this paper we describe a simulated computer network environment wherein we conduct attacks and train defensive agents that employ Moving Target Defense and Deception strategies. We train an attacking agent, using Proximal Policy Optimization, to learn a policy to extract sensitive network data as quickly as possible from the environment. We then train a defending agent to prevent the attacker from reaching its objective. Our results demonstrate how the defender is able to learn a policy to inhibit the attacker.

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          cover image ACM Other conferences
          ARES '23: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security
          August 2023
          1440 pages
          ISBN:9798400707728
          DOI:10.1145/3600160
          Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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          Publication History

          Published: 29 August 2023

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          Author Tags

          1. Deception
          2. Deep Reinforcement Learning
          3. Moving Target Defense
          4. Network Security

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