Cyber threat analysis is crucial to securing modern IT systems. In the ongoing project described here a strictly mathematical method for threat analysis is sketched. The threat landscape between an attacker (hacker) and a defender (system owner) is modeled along the formalisms of stochastic game theory, thus opening the way for a rigorous formal analysis. The key benefit of the project is its applicability to real-world situations. Therefore, the information about possible attack and defense actions is taken from several proven data sources resulting in a large number of actions (173 attack actions and 115 defense actions). We present an adaptation of the so-called Princess-and-Monster game to model the problem. Various problems with the formalization are discussed. To keep the model manageable despite the claim of practicality, it is applied only to specific scenarios mimicking real-world situations.

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DOI: 10.5220/0011792700003405

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