Game Theory Approaches for Evaluating the Deception-based Moving Target Defense

Moving target defense (MTD) is a proactive defensive mechanism proposed to disrupt and disable potential attacks, thus reversing the defender's disadvantages. Cyber deception is a complementary technique that is often used to enhance MTD by utilizing misinformation to deceive and mislead attackers. Deception elements, such as honeypot, honey bait, honey token, breadcrumb, and well-constructed deception scenes, can significantly increase the uncertainties for attackers. Deception-based MTD techniques can change the asymmetry situation between defenders and attackers through affecting the attacker's perception of the system. However, there is still a lack of understanding about the role of cyber deception in MTD, and few research works have evaluated the effectiveness of cyber deception.