Computing Optimal Policies for Attack Graphs with Action Failures and Costs

<jats:p>An attack graph represents all known sequences of actions that compromise a system in form of an and-or graph. We assume that each action in the attack graph has a specified cost and probability of success and propose an algorithm for computing an action selection policy minimizing the expected cost of performing an attack. We model the problem as a finite horizon MDP and use forward search with transposition tables and various pruning techniques based on the structure of the attack graph. We experimentally compare the proposed algorithm to a generic MDP solver and a solver transforming the problem to an Unconstrained Influence Diagram showing a substantial runtime improvement.</jats:p>