Honeyquest: Rapidly Measuring the Enticingness of Cyber Deception Techniques with Code-based Questionnaires

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kahlhofer, Mario, Achleitner, Stefan, Rass, Stefan, Mayrhofer, René
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Kahlhofer, Mario
Achleitner, Stefan
Rass, Stefan
Mayrhofer, René
author_facet Kahlhofer, Mario
Achleitner, Stefan
Rass, Stefan
Mayrhofer, René
contents Fooling adversaries with traps such as honeytokens can slow down cyber attacks and create strong indicators of compromise. Unfortunately, cyber deception techniques are often poorly specified. Also, realistically measuring their effectiveness requires a well-exposed software system together with a production-ready implementation of these techniques. This makes rapid prototyping challenging. Our work translates 13 previously researched and 12 self-defined techniques into a high-level, machine-readable specification. Our open-source tool, Honeyquest, allows researchers to quickly evaluate the enticingness of deception techniques without implementing them. We test the enticingness of 25 cyber deception techniques and 19 true security risks in an experiment with 47 humans. We successfully replicate the goals of previous work with many consistent findings, but without a time-consuming implementation of these techniques on real computer systems. We provide valuable insights for the design of enticing deception and also show that the presence of cyber deception can significantly reduce the risk that adversaries will find a true security risk by about 22% on average.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_10796
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Honeyquest: Rapidly Measuring the Enticingness of Cyber Deception Techniques with Code-based Questionnaires
Kahlhofer, Mario
Achleitner, Stefan
Rass, Stefan
Mayrhofer, René
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Fooling adversaries with traps such as honeytokens can slow down cyber attacks and create strong indicators of compromise. Unfortunately, cyber deception techniques are often poorly specified. Also, realistically measuring their effectiveness requires a well-exposed software system together with a production-ready implementation of these techniques. This makes rapid prototyping challenging. Our work translates 13 previously researched and 12 self-defined techniques into a high-level, machine-readable specification. Our open-source tool, Honeyquest, allows researchers to quickly evaluate the enticingness of deception techniques without implementing them. We test the enticingness of 25 cyber deception techniques and 19 true security risks in an experiment with 47 humans. We successfully replicate the goals of previous work with many consistent findings, but without a time-consuming implementation of these techniques on real computer systems. We provide valuable insights for the design of enticing deception and also show that the presence of cyber deception can significantly reduce the risk that adversaries will find a true security risk by about 22% on average.
title Honeyquest: Rapidly Measuring the Enticingness of Cyber Deception Techniques with Code-based Questionnaires
topic Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10796