Automating cyber offensive operations for cyber challenges

Abstract

Cyber awareness training has become a growing industry, with more and more organisations starting to focus on training personnel on how to behave in a secure manner when engaging in cyber operations. Cyber challenges place participants in realistic cyber defence scenarios in order to provide training under fire. This paper documents steps taken to develop an automated attack capability for use within a cyber challenge environment. The challenges discussed within this paper focuses on cyber challenges conducted within developing countries, such as South Africa, but the principles discussed within this paper aim to be applicable to be applicable to all cyber challenges in general. The researchers based their work on prior publications covering threat modelling, construction of cyber security testbeds and planning of offensive cyber operations. The work presented in this paper is a practical application of an ontological model for cyber attack scenarios.