Gathering threat intelligence through computer network deception

The threat landscape is changing significantly; complexity and rate of attacks is ever increasing, and the network defender does not have enough resources (people, technology, intelligence, context) to make informed decisions. The need for network defenders to develop and create proactive threat intelligence is on the rise. Network deception may provide analysts the ability to collect raw intelligence about threat actors as they reveal their Tools, Tactics and Procedures (TTP). This increased understanding of the latest cyber-attacks would enable cyber defenders to better support and defend the network, thereby increasing the cost to the adversary by making it more difficult to successfully attack an enterprise. Using a deception framework, we have created a live, unpredictable, and adaptable Deception Environment leveraging virtualization/cloud technology, software defined networking, introspection and analytics. The environment not only provides the means to identify and contain the threat, but also facilitates the ability to study, understand, and develop protections against sophisticated adversaries. By leveraging actionable data, in real-time or after a sustained engagement, the Deception Environment may be easily modified to interact with and change the perception of the adversary on-the-fly. This ability to change what and where the attacker is on the network, as well as change and modify the content of the adversary on exfiltration and infiltration, is the defining novelty of our Deception Environment.