Cyber-attack path discovery in a dynamic supply chain maritime risk management system

Abstract

Maritime port infrastructures rely on the use of information systems for collaboration, while a vital part of collaborating is to provide protection to these systems. Attack graph analysis and risk assessment provide information that can be used to protect the assets of a network from cyber-attacks. Furthermore, attack graphs provide functionality that can be used to identify vulnerabilities in a network and how these can be exploited by potential attackers. Existing attack graph generation methods are inadequate in satisfying certain requirements necessary in a dynamic supply chain risk management environment, since they do not consider variables that assist in exploring specific network parts that satisfy certain criteria, such as the entry and target points, the propagation length and the location and capability of the potential attacker. In this paper, we present a cyber-attack path discovery method that is used as a component of a maritime risk management system. The method uses constraints and Depth-first search to effectively generate attack graphs that the administrator is interested in. To support our method and to show its effectiveness we have evaluated it using real data from a maritime supply chain.