Using an Ontology for Network Attack Planning

Abstract

The modern complexity of network attacks and their counter-measures (cyber operations) requires detailed planning. This paper presents a Network Attack Planning ontology which is aimed at providing support for planning such network operations within the cyber domain. The amount of cyber information is increasing constantly and the time that information stays relevant and valuable in decreasing similarly. Thus semantic technologies can contribute towards the intelligent processing of information in this ever-changing environment. An ontology enables the representation of semantic information. In additional, automated reasoning can enrich the representation by inferring unknown relationships. The inferences that can be made with the automated reasoning capabilities of ontologies provide a unique insight into the relationships between network targets and attacks, compared to traditional databases.

An Ontology of Cyberspace as a Basis for Decision-making in Cyberoperations

“…An ontology can also be the starting point for visualisations (Sikos, 2023) or useful for different sorts of reasoning (Smith & Ceusters, 2010). van Heerden, et al (2016) describes the benefits of creating a shared vocabulary and also mention as benefits the clarification of domain assumptions and analysing domain knowledge as well as separating this from operational knowledge. Additionally, the implementation of Knowledge Graphs and automated reasoning requires that concepts are grounded which also elevates the relevance of ontologies (Martins, et al, 2022).…”

“…The importance of time in cyberspace has been highlighted by several researchers, such as Phister (2010), Bromander, et al (2020), van Heerden, et al (2016), Morosoff, et al (2015 and Grandin (2023). This also presents constraints to the ontological engineering of an ontology of cyberspace.…”