Cyber Deceptive Countermeasures’ Effects on Human-Simulated Attacks

Deception techniques can be an effective method to slow down or deter attackers in the reconnaissance phase of a cyber attack. This paper provides an experiment designed to generate data and feedback on how effective the use of cyber deceptive techniques is against specifically human threat actors. Multiple penetration testers individually test two near-identical environments where one environment has deceptive countermeasures deployed. The results show that attackers spent an average of 170% more time on the reconnaissance phase with an 80% decrease in their ability to successfully compromise a network when cyber deceptive countermeasures are employed. We conclude that cyber deceptive countermeasures are effective on humans and more work should be done in support of adding cyber deception to standard cybersecurity tool kits.