Abstract: Moving target defense (MTD) is a novel way to alter the asymmetric situation of attacks and defenses, and a lot of MTD studies have been carried out recently. However, relevant analysis for the defense mechanism of the MTD technology is still absent. In this paper, we analyze the defense mechanism of MTD technology in two dimensions. First, we present a new defense model named MP2R to describe the proactivity and effect of MTD technology intuitively. Second, we use the incomplete information dynamic game theory to verify the proactivity and effect of MTD technology. Specifically, we model the interaction between a defender who equips a server with different types of MTD techniques and a visitor who can be a user or an attacker, and analyze the equilibria and their conditions for these models. Then, we take an existing incomplete information dynamic game model for traditional defense and its equilibrium result as baseline for comparison, to validate the proactivity and effect of MTD technology. We also identify the factors that will influence the proactivity and effectiveness of the MTD approaches. This work gives theoretical support for understanding the defense process and defense mechanism of MTD technology and provides suggestions to improve the effectiveness of MTD approaches.

Key words: Network security, Moving target defense (MTD), Defense mechanism, Defense model, Game theory

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