Software Diversity for Cyber Deception

In this paper, we propose a cyber deception approach using software diversity in a honeynet. Honeypot allocation is used as an active cyber deception technique to increase the uncertainty of adversaries and hide the true state of the network. Moreover, software diversity limits the ability of attackers to discover honeypots. Specifically, this paper introduces a diversity-based honeypot allocation approach for network security formulated in a game-theoretic framework. We consider a two-player zero-sum game between the network defender and the adversary. To validate our findings, we measured the potential benefits of diversity on network security and calculated the optimum diversifying strategy in Nash equilibrium using different honeypot types.