Characterizing the Optimal Attack Strategy Decision in Cyber Epidemic Attacks with Limited Resources

A cyber epidemic attack is considered as one effective cyber weapon in cyberspace. Generally speaking, due to the limited attack resource, the adversary needs to adjust their attack strategy timely to maximize the attack profits in the attack process. However, previous studies have not focused on the interaction between the cyber epidemic attack and the adversary’s strategy from the perspective of the dynamics. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the network security situation and the adversary’s strategy decision with limited attack resources. We propose a new dynamical framework by coupling the adversary’s strategy decision model to the cyber epidemic model. Through numerical results, we find the mutual effects between the network security situation and the adversary’s strategy decision. Specifically, the selective attack strategy can help the adversary accumulate more attack resource compared to the random attack strategy.