Cyber Weapons as Components of Weapon Systems
Abstract:
The authors propose a novel decomposition of a cyber weapon into cooperating modules, discussing how each module influences the weapon features. Next, the authors examine the adoption of an attack infrastructure to mitigate the weaknesses of these weapons as identified in the literature. Such an attack infrastructure supports the coordination and updating of weapon modules both during their propagation toward targets and after deployment on those targets. The use of this infrastructure parallels that of conventional physical weapons and is corroborated by the evolution of malware and rootkits in the criminal domain.
AUTHORS
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa,
Pisa, Italy
Fabrizio Baiardi is a full professor at Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa where he leads the group on cyber risk assessment and management. His main research interest is the definition of a quantitative approach to assess and to manage cyber risk for critical infrastructure based upon adversary emulation and digital twins. He has authored several papers on risk assessment and management and has led several assessments of critical infrastructures for gas and power distribution. He holds three patents on intrusion and botnet detection.
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa,
Pisa, Italy
Vincenzo Sammartino is currently working on his Ph.D. at the National Ph.D. Program on AI. His research focuses on the generation of synthetic data on intrusion through adversary simulations and digital twins to train AI.
Published In
Journal of Information Warfare
The definitive publication for the best and latest research and analysis on information warfare, information operations, and cyber crime. Available in traditional hard copy or online.
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