Taxonomy of cyber attacks and simulation of their effects

Abstract

Due to an increasing level of reliance on computer network technology, military organizations are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Cyber attacks take a variety of forms and have a broad spectrum of effects. In order to facilitate military cyber operators' and defenders' understanding of the threats they face, we propose a taxonomy of cyber attacks based on the level of access required by the attacker to launch the attack. We also discuss a number of methods used to deliver cyber attacks to target systems. Finally, we propose methods to simulate the effects of several cyber attack types for use in simulation in support of training and experimentation.