Serial or Simultaneous? Possible Attack Strategies with an Arsenal of Attack Tools

Yahel Giat, Irit Nowik

2024

Abstract

In various fields such as medicine, management, cyber operations, and military strategy, the choice between sequential and parallel strategies is pivotal in achieving objectives, be it maximizing the likelihood of success or minimizing the time to victory. This study considers a hacker who attempts to destroy a rival system using multiple attacking tools. It is assumed that the success probability of each attack tool to destroy the system is equal and independent of the other tools. Execution of an attack is time consuming and it is assumed that this attack time increases exponentially with the number of tools used simultaneously. We consider different attaching schemes that vary in their design and balance between parallel and sequential steps. Our findings indicate that when the attack time for a multi-tool attack is extremely short, the optimal solution will be a purely simultaneous attack. Conversely, if the attack time approaches the total time required for a sequential attack, then the optimal solution will be a purely sequential approach. In between these extremes, we discover that a mixed strategy is optimal. Interestingly, our numerical analysis reveals that in these mixed cases, it is consistently more advantageous to initiate a simultaneous attack and then complement it with a sequential one. Moreover, we demonstrate that as the probability of success increases, the optimum tends towards a sequential attack.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Giat Y. and Nowik I. (2024). Serial or Simultaneous? Possible Attack Strategies with an Arsenal of Attack Tools. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES; ISBN 978-989-758-681-1, SciTePress, pages 171-178. DOI: 10.5220/0012433800003639

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icores24,
author={Yahel Giat and Irit Nowik},
title={Serial or Simultaneous? Possible Attack Strategies with an Arsenal of Attack Tools},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES},
year={2024},
pages={171-178},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012433800003639},
isbn={978-989-758-681-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES
TI - Serial or Simultaneous? Possible Attack Strategies with an Arsenal of Attack Tools
SN - 978-989-758-681-1
AU - Giat Y.
AU - Nowik I.
PY - 2024
SP - 171
EP - 178
DO - 10.5220/0012433800003639
PB - SciTePress