Leveraging Reinforcement Learning in Red Teaming for Advanced Ransomware Attack Simulations
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2024
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866929399478091776 |
|---|---|
| author | Wang, Cheng Redino, Christopher Clark, Ryan Rahman, Abdul Aguinaga, Sal Murli, Sathvik Nandakumar, Dhruv Rao, Roland Huang, Lanxiao Radke, Daniel Bowen, Edward |
| author_facet | Wang, Cheng Redino, Christopher Clark, Ryan Rahman, Abdul Aguinaga, Sal Murli, Sathvik Nandakumar, Dhruv Rao, Roland Huang, Lanxiao Radke, Daniel Bowen, Edward |
| contents | Ransomware presents a significant and increasing threat to individuals and organizations by encrypting their systems and not releasing them until a large fee has been extracted. To bolster preparedness against potential attacks, organizations commonly conduct red teaming exercises, which involve simulated attacks to assess existing security measures. This paper proposes a novel approach utilizing reinforcement learning (RL) to simulate ransomware attacks. By training an RL agent in a simulated environment mirroring real-world networks, effective attack strategies can be learned quickly, significantly streamlining traditional, manual penetration testing processes. The attack pathways revealed by the RL agent can provide valuable insights to the defense team, helping them identify network weak points and develop more resilient defensive measures. Experimental results on a 152-host example network confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach, demonstrating the RL agent's capability to discover and orchestrate attacks on high-value targets while evading honeyfiles (decoy files strategically placed to detect unauthorized access). |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_17576 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Leveraging Reinforcement Learning in Red Teaming for Advanced Ransomware Attack Simulations Wang, Cheng Redino, Christopher Clark, Ryan Rahman, Abdul Aguinaga, Sal Murli, Sathvik Nandakumar, Dhruv Rao, Roland Huang, Lanxiao Radke, Daniel Bowen, Edward Cryptography and Security Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Ransomware presents a significant and increasing threat to individuals and organizations by encrypting their systems and not releasing them until a large fee has been extracted. To bolster preparedness against potential attacks, organizations commonly conduct red teaming exercises, which involve simulated attacks to assess existing security measures. This paper proposes a novel approach utilizing reinforcement learning (RL) to simulate ransomware attacks. By training an RL agent in a simulated environment mirroring real-world networks, effective attack strategies can be learned quickly, significantly streamlining traditional, manual penetration testing processes. The attack pathways revealed by the RL agent can provide valuable insights to the defense team, helping them identify network weak points and develop more resilient defensive measures. Experimental results on a 152-host example network confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach, demonstrating the RL agent's capability to discover and orchestrate attacks on high-value targets while evading honeyfiles (decoy files strategically placed to detect unauthorized access). |
| title | Leveraging Reinforcement Learning in Red Teaming for Advanced Ransomware Attack Simulations |
| topic | Cryptography and Security Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17576 |