A Method for Measuring the Heterogeneity of Mimicry Defense Executor Set

The vulnerability in software and hardware is a main factor affecting the security of information system. At present, most cyberspace security incidents are attacked by attackers with the help of vulnerabilities in the target system. Traditional cyberspace defense technologies are all based on prior knowledge, and carry out passive defense of “containment and repair”, but it has no way to solve unknown vulnerabilities. The mimicry defense technology uses functional equivalent isomers, which can increase the system uncertainty by means of reconstruction and policy scheduling, so as to improve the security of the system. The heterogeneous between the executors is the foundation of ensuring the security of the mimic system. This paper analyzes the influence of the heterogeneity of executor set on the system security, and points out the necessity of quantifying the heterogeneity of executor set. Based on the quantification of the heterogeneous of the executor set by using information entropy, the shortcomings are analyzed. The clustering method is used to describe the level entropy combined with the voting mode of mimic defense. Finally, the heterogeneity of an executor set is defined as the combination of information entropy and hierarchical entropy. The experimental show that the method can distinguish the heterogeneous of different executors, especially the executor sets with similar heterogeneity.