Łukasz Jalowski

Moving Target Defense (MTD) is a paradigm that has the potential to revolutionize the approach to network security. Although a significant number of papers have been published on the topic, there are still no standards or any dominant implementations of this concept. This article identifies and attempts to bridge the gap in understanding various aspects of MTD security while also defining the research directions necessary to implement MTD techniques in real-world scenarios. It discusses the security of key design principles of MTD, considers problems regarding applying MTD to real networks, and finally addresses threat modeling in the context of MTD. By aggregating various security aspects related to MTD, some of which have not been typically discussed in the available literature on the subject, this work aims to assist in designing future MTD schemes, help navigate around various security caveats, and highlight possible research directions that have not been sufficiently explored in the existing literature.

The static nature of many of currently used network systems has multiple practical benefits, including cost optimization and ease of deployment, but it makes them vulnerable to attackers who can observe from the shadows to gain insight before launching a devastating attack against the infrastructure. Moving target defense (MTD) is one of the emerging areas that promises to protect against this kind of attack by continuously shifting system parameters and changing the attack surface of protected systems. The emergence of network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) technology allows for the implementation of very sophisticated MTD techniques. Furthermore, the introduction of such solutions as field-programmable gate array (FPGA) programmable acceleration cards makes it possible to take the MTD concept to the next level. Applying hardware acceleration to existing concepts or developing new, dedicated methods will offer more robust, efficient, and secure solutions. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are still no major implementations of MTD schemes inside large-scale networks. This survey aims to understand why, by analyzing research made in the field of MTD to show current pitfalls and possible improvements that need to be addressed in future proposals to make MTD a viable solution to address current cybersecurity threats in real-life scenarios.