Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Network Penetration Testing
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Network hardware, software, segments or applications were added, changed or removed
- Significant systems’ upgrades or modifications are applied to infrastructure or applications
- Infrastructure changes including moving locations
- Security solutions or patches were installed or modified
- Security or users’ policies were modified
1.1. Research Context and Method
1.2. Paper Outline
2. Literature Review
2.1. Previous Works on PT Automation
2.2. Drawbacks and Limits of the Current PT Practice
2.3. Motivation and Contribution
- Reducing the cost of systematic testing and regular re-testing due to human labor cost;
- Reduce the impact on the assessed network notably the security exposure, performances, and downtime during the testing;
- Relieve human experts from boring repetitive tasks and assign them to more challenging tasks;
- Dealing more effectively with changing cyber threats by allowing flexibility and adaptability;
- Perform more broad tests by covering a wide variety of attack vectors and also consider complex and evasive attacking paths that are hard to identify and investigate by human testers.
3. Reinforcement Learning Approach
- Effective autonomous learning and improving through constant interaction with the environment;
- Reward-based learning and existing flexible rewarding schemes which might be delayed to enable RL agent to maximize a long-term goal;
- Richness of the RL environment which helps in capturing all major characteristics of PT including uncertainty and complexity.
3.1. Towards POMDP Modeling of PT
3.2. POMDP Solving Algorithm
3.3. PERSEUS Algorithm
3.4. GIP Algorithm
3.5. PEGASUS Algorithm
3.6. Other Candidates
3.7. POMDP Solving Choices
4. IAPTS Design and Functioning
4.1. IAPTS Operative Modes
- Fully autonomous; IAPTS entirely in control of testing after achieving maturity so it can perform PT tasks in the same way that human experts will do with some minor issues that will be reported for expert review.
- Partially autonomous; the most common mode of IAPTS and reflect the first weeks or months of professional use when IAPTS will be performing tests under the constant and continuous supervision of a high-caliber PT expert.
- Decision-making assistant; IAPTS will shadow human experts and assist him/her by providing a pinpoint decision on scenarios identical to those saved into the expertise base and thus alight tester from repetitive tasks.
- Expertise building; IAPTS running in the background while human tester performs tests and capture the decisions made in form of expertise and proceed to the generalization and of the extracted experience and build the expertise base for future use.
4.2. From PT to A Reinforcement Learning Problem
4.3. Representing Network PT As RL Environment
- A failed action to fully (root) control a machine that leads to further action attempting user session or escalates privileges or switching to other attack paths;
- Dealing with action relying on uncertain information and fail because of the assumption made and require further actions when additional information becomes available and might be successful;
- Actions prevented or stopped by security defense (FWs or IDPSs) which may be re-attempted under different circumstances.
4.4. POMDP Transitions and Observations Probabilities
4.5. Rewarding Schema
4.6. IAPTS Memory, Expertise Management and Pre-Processing
5. Testing IAPTS and Results
5.1. Simulation Platform
5.2. IAPTS Results
5.3. Discussion
6. Conclusions and Future Works
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
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Ghanem, M.C.; Chen, T.M. Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Network Penetration Testing. Information 2020, 11, 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11010006
Ghanem MC, Chen TM. Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Network Penetration Testing. Information. 2020; 11(1):6. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11010006
Chicago/Turabian StyleGhanem, Mohamed C., and Thomas M. Chen. 2020. "Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Network Penetration Testing" Information 11, no. 1: 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11010006
APA StyleGhanem, M. C., & Chen, T. M. (2020). Reinforcement Learning for Efficient Network Penetration Testing. Information, 11(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11010006