Cyber Chaff Spatial Voting Grid Adaptation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Honeypots do not evolve or adapt to user actions, making them ineffective in mimicking a real IT infrastructure response, which can lead to attackers quickly discerning cyber chaff as random and detecting their presence.
Innovation Solution
The development of non-random, deterministic cyber chaff using spatial voting (SV) systems that evolve between epochs, generating responses that mimic actual IT infrastructure interactions, thereby keeping attackers engaged and providing valuable data for future attack countermeasures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If honeypots use static, non-evolving data stores to emulate IT infrastructure, then they provide a simple implementation, but attackers can quickly discern the responses are random and detect their presence
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic cyber chaff that evolves between epochs by altering active and inactive cells in the SV grid based on contiguous active cell counts. This dynamic behavior allows the system to adapt to attacker actions while maintaining a manageable structure through rule-based evolution rather than complex decision-making algorithms.
Solution Approach 2:
The SV grid automatically evolves and adapts to attacker behavior through self-service mechanisms. The system monitors attacker interactions and autonomously modifies which cells are active or inactive in subsequent epochs, eliminating the need for external intervention while maintaining adaptability against evolving attack patterns.
2Productivity
If cyber chaff uses random data generation to emulate responses, then it reduces memory overhead and processor bandwidth, but the random nature makes it easily discernible to attackers
Solution Approach 1:
The system employs periodic action by dividing operation into epochs where the SV grid configuration changes at regular intervals. Within each epoch, deterministic rules maintain consistent cell states, but between epochs, the grid evolves based on accumulated attacker behavior data. This periodic restructuring provides variety in responses while maintaining computational efficiency through rule-based transitions rather than continuous random generation.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of generating cyber chaff can include determining a cell of a grid of cells to which a first feature and a second feature of user data maps, identifying a cell type of the cell, the cell type indicating whether the cell is an active cell, an inactive cell, or a sub-process cell, and providing cyber chaff based on cyber chaff data associated with either (a) one or more cells of the inactive cell type or (b) one or more cells of the sub-process cell type.