Designing Robust Cyber-Defense Agents with Evolving Behavior Trees
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2024
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| _version_ | 1866929578593746944 |
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| author | Potteiger, Nicholas Samaddar, Ankita Bergstrom, Hunter Koutsoukos, Xenofon |
| author_facet | Potteiger, Nicholas Samaddar, Ankita Bergstrom, Hunter Koutsoukos, Xenofon |
| contents | Modern network defense can benefit from the use of autonomous systems, offloading tedious and time-consuming work to agents with standard and learning-enabled components. These agents, operating on critical network infrastructure, need to be robust and trustworthy to ensure defense against adaptive cyber-attackers and, simultaneously, provide explanations for their actions and network activity. However, learning-enabled components typically use models, such as deep neural networks, that are not transparent in their high-level decision-making leading to assurance challenges. Additionally, cyber-defense agents must execute complex long-term defense tasks in a reactive manner that involve coordination of multiple interdependent subtasks. Behavior trees are known to be successful in modelling interpretable, reactive, and modular agent policies with learning-enabled components. In this paper, we develop an approach to design autonomous cyber defense agents using behavior trees with learning-enabled components, which we refer to as Evolving Behavior Trees (EBTs). We learn the structure of an EBT with a novel abstract cyber environment and optimize learning-enabled components for deployment. The learning-enabled components are optimized for adapting to various cyber-attacks and deploying security mechanisms. The learned EBT structure is evaluated in a simulated cyber environment, where it effectively mitigates threats and enhances network visibility. For deployment, we develop a software architecture for evaluating EBT-based agents in computer network defense scenarios. Our results demonstrate that the EBT-based agent is robust to adaptive cyber-attacks and provides high-level explanations for interpreting its decisions and actions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_16383 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Designing Robust Cyber-Defense Agents with Evolving Behavior Trees Potteiger, Nicholas Samaddar, Ankita Bergstrom, Hunter Koutsoukos, Xenofon Artificial Intelligence Cryptography and Security Machine Learning Systems and Control Modern network defense can benefit from the use of autonomous systems, offloading tedious and time-consuming work to agents with standard and learning-enabled components. These agents, operating on critical network infrastructure, need to be robust and trustworthy to ensure defense against adaptive cyber-attackers and, simultaneously, provide explanations for their actions and network activity. However, learning-enabled components typically use models, such as deep neural networks, that are not transparent in their high-level decision-making leading to assurance challenges. Additionally, cyber-defense agents must execute complex long-term defense tasks in a reactive manner that involve coordination of multiple interdependent subtasks. Behavior trees are known to be successful in modelling interpretable, reactive, and modular agent policies with learning-enabled components. In this paper, we develop an approach to design autonomous cyber defense agents using behavior trees with learning-enabled components, which we refer to as Evolving Behavior Trees (EBTs). We learn the structure of an EBT with a novel abstract cyber environment and optimize learning-enabled components for deployment. The learning-enabled components are optimized for adapting to various cyber-attacks and deploying security mechanisms. The learned EBT structure is evaluated in a simulated cyber environment, where it effectively mitigates threats and enhances network visibility. For deployment, we develop a software architecture for evaluating EBT-based agents in computer network defense scenarios. Our results demonstrate that the EBT-based agent is robust to adaptive cyber-attacks and provides high-level explanations for interpreting its decisions and actions. |
| title | Designing Robust Cyber-Defense Agents with Evolving Behavior Trees |
| topic | Artificial Intelligence Cryptography and Security Machine Learning Systems and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16383 |