Related papers: A Markov Decision Process Model for Intrusion Tole…

In classical reinforcement learning, when exploring an environment, agents accept arbitrary short term loss for long term gain. This is infeasible for safety critical applications, such as robotics, where even a single unsafe action may…

Penetration Testing is a methodology for assessing network security, by generating and executing possible attacks. Doing so automatically allows for regular and systematic testing. A key question then is how to automatically generate the…

The new generation of cyber threats leverages advanced AI-aided methods, which make them capable to launch multi-stage, dynamic, and effective attacks. Current cyber-defense systems encounter various challenges to defend against such new…

Moving Target Defense (MTD) is an emerging game-changing defense strategy in cybersecurity with the goal of strengthening defenders and conversely puzzling adversaries in a network environment. The successful deployment of an MTD system can…

With the rapid development of Internet and the sharp increase of network crime, network security has become very important and received a lot of attention. We model security issues as stochastic systems. This allows us to find weaknesses in…

Tri-level defender-attacker game models are a well-studied method for determining how best to protect a system (e.g., a transportation network) from attacks. Existing models assume that defender and attacker actions have a perfect effect,…

A Markov decision process can be parameterized by a transition kernel and a reward function. Both play essential roles in the study of reinforcement learning as evidenced by their presence in the Bellman equations. In our inquiry of various…

We present a system for interactive examination of learned security policies. It allows a user to traverse episodes of Markov decision processes in a controlled manner and to track the actions triggered by security policies. Similar to a…

We consider the control of a Markov decision process (MDP) that undergoes an abrupt change in its transition kernel (mode). We formulate the problem of minimizing regret under control-switching based on mode change detection, compared to a…

We consider the problem of optimally designing a system for repeated use under uncertainty. We develop a modeling framework that integrates design and operational phases, which are represented by a mixed-integer program and discounted-cost…

Wildfires pose an increasing threat to the safety and reliability of power systems, particularly in distribution networks located in fire-prone regions. To mitigate ignition risk from electrical infrastructure, utilities often employ safety…

This paper delves into a comprehensive analysis of fault-tolerant memory systems, focusing on recovery techniques modeled using Markov chains to address transient errors. The study revolves around the application of scrubbing methods in…

In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…

We formulate intrusion tolerance for a system with service replicas as a two-level optimal control problem. On the local level node controllers perform intrusion recovery, and on the global level a system controller manages the replication…

In our time cybersecurity has grown to be a topic of massive proportion at the national and enterprise levels. Our thesis is that the economic perspective and investment decision-making are vital factors in determining the outcome of the…

The goal of an Intrusion Detection is inadequate to detect errors and unusual activity on a network or on the hosts belonging to a local network by monitoring network activity. Algorithms for building detection models are broadly classified…

Over the years, artificial neural networks have been applied successfully in many areas including IT security. Yet, neural networks can only process continuous input data. This is particularly challenging for security-related non-continuous…

Protecting against multi-step attacks of uncertain duration and timing forces defenders into an indefinite, always ongoing, resource-intensive response. To effectively allocate resources, a defender must be able to analyze multi-step…

Many defensive measures in cyber security are still dominated by heuristics, catalogs of standard procedures, and best practices. Considering the case of data backup strategies, we aim towards mathematically modeling the underlying threat…

Pre-trained language models (PLMs) have been widely used to underpin various downstream tasks. However, the adversarial attack task has found that PLMs are vulnerable to small perturbations. Mainstream methods adopt a detached two-stage…