Deception-Based Survivability

Abstract

Critical systems in current threat landscape demand more than just fault-tolerance and security; they demand survivability. Survivability is the ability of a system to continue delivering essential services during attacks, faults or accidents. This is usually accomplished via a four-layered defense setting that consists of prevention, detection, recovery and adaption. As evident by the recent incline in advanced persistent threats, the existing defense systems are in a dire need of evolution. This new generation of defense systems should be smart, adaptive and unlike traditional systems, stay ahead of the malicious actors. Many researchers have started to consider deception as a means to this end. Deception involves misrepresenting or hiding information in order to manipulate a user's actions. When engrafted in the prevention and detection layers, deception can help trace attacker intent, objective and strategies (AIOS) which aids in the development of targeted recovery and adaptation procedures. Such procedures, in turn, help a system survive in hostile environments. Though the adoption of deception-based defense has been hindered by legal and moral issues in the past but the recent increase in interest in this field holds great promise. This chapter discusses deception-based survivability, its benefits and shortcomings. It presents a high-level deployment architecture that uses deception to ensure system survivability. Other aspects of deception-based survivability such as performance overhead, continued effectiveness and precision have also been discussed.