Honeypot-Based Cyber Deception Against Malicious Reconnaissance via Hypergame Theory

Abstract

Malicious reconnaissance is a critical step for attackers to collect sufficient network knowledge and choose valuable targets for intrusion. Defensive deception (DD) is an essential strategy against threats by misleading attackers' observations and beliefs. Honeypots are widely used for cyber deception that aims to confuse attackers and waste their resources and efforts. Defenders may use low-interaction honeypots or high-interaction honeypots. In this paper, we consider a hybrid honeypot system that balances the use of the two levels of honeypot complexity, where high-interaction honeypots are more capable of deceiving skilled attackers than low-interaction honeypots. We present a two-player hypergame model that characterizes how a defender should deploy low and high-interaction honeypots to defend the network against malicious reconnaissance activities. We model the tradeoff of each player and characterize their best strategies within a hypergame framework that considers the imperfect knowledge of each player toward their opponent. Finally, our numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed honeypot system.