A Two-Constraint Approach to Risky Cybersecurity Experiment Management

Cybersecurity research demands extensive experimentation to be validated. This experimentation is inherently risky: it may involve any combination of live malicious code, disruptive actions and connectivity to the active Internet. Previously, risky experiments were heavily contained to reduce danger to the experimental infrastructure and the Internet. The authors argue that such an approach unnecessarily stifles research. In this paper, they explore a collaborative two-tiered risky experiment management model. It incorporates input from both experimenters and testbed operators; each party specifies constraints on their component's behavior. Experiment constraints limit behavior in ways that do not affect an experiment's validity, thus meeting usability goals.