The intelligence community is seeking to develop a cybersystem capable of deceiving adversaries, preferably without assistance from a human operator, according to a request for information from the community’s top research agency.
“Historically, denial and deception has been used by militaries for defense, whether it be to instill uncertainty or to provide misinformation,” according to the RFI published on Tuesday. “D&D can also be looked at similarly for increasing cyberdefense posture and resiliency.”
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The system would aim to “mislead and gain an advantage over a cyberadversary through a variety of tactics such as manipulation, distortion, [and] falsification of evidence,” notes the request, which was put out by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.
However, the proposal suggests, the system could ultimately be used either defensively or offensively. Among the components IARPA is seeking to study are the metrics used to gauge “deception capability,” whether any system has been tested against human operators seeking to defeat it, and where in the “cyber kill chain” deception methods are most effective. Some of the options include reconnaissance, system exploitation and weaponization.
“Many techniques lack rigorous experimental measures of effectiveness, information is insufficient to determine how defensive deception changes attacker behavior or how deception increases the likeliness of early detection of a cyberattack,” the request notes.
“The responses to this RFI may be used to support a one-day workshop on deception for cyberdefense,” the proposal adds. “An expected result for such a workshop is the identification of promising areas for research investment.”
