[Paper Review] Pandora: A Cyber Range Environment for the Safe Testing and Deployment of Autonomous Cyber Attack Tools

Hetong Jiang, Taejun Choi+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Sep 24, 2020

Information and Cyber Security30 references4 citations

TL;DR

Pandora is a secure cyber range environment designed to safely test and deploy autonomous cyber attack tools by isolating them from real enterprise systems through intentional incompatibility with production infrastructure. The system enables automated tool validation via binary conversion and demonstrated safety through compatibility testing with malicious code, proving its resilience to unintended propagation.

ABSTRACT

Cybersecurity tools are increasingly automated with artificial intelligent (AI) capabilities to match the exponential scale of attacks, compensate for the relatively slower rate of training new cybersecurity talents, and improve of the accuracy and performance of both tools and users. However, the safe and appropriate usage of autonomous cyber attack tools - especially at the development stages for these tools - is still largely an unaddressed gap. Our survey of current literature and tools showed that most of the existing cyber range designs are mostly using manual tools and have not considered augmenting automated tools or the potential security issues caused by the tools. In other words, there is still room for a novel cyber range design which allow security researchers to safely deploy autonomous tools and perform automated tool testing if needed. In this paper, we introduce Pandora, a safe testing environment which allows security researchers and cyber range users to perform experiments on automated cyber attack tools that may have strong potential of usage and at the same time, a strong potential for risks. Unlike existing testbeds and cyber ranges which have direct compatibility with enterprise computer systems and the potential for risk propagation across the enterprise network, our test system is intentionally designed to be incompatible with enterprise real-world computing systems to reduce the risk of attack propagation into actual infrastructure. Our design also provides a tool to convert in-development automated cyber attack tools into to executable test binaries for validation and usage realistic enterprise system environments if required. Our experiments tested automated attack tools on our proposed system to validate the usability of our proposed environment. Our experiments also proved the safety of our environment by compatibility testing using simple malicious code.

Motivation & Objective

• To address the lack of safe testing environments for autonomous cyber attack tools during development.
• To reduce the risk of attack propagation into real enterprise networks by isolating test environments from production systems.
• To provide a framework that supports the conversion of in-development attack tools into executable test binaries for realistic simulation.
• To enable researchers to validate automated tools in a controlled, secure environment while maintaining compatibility with enterprise-like systems.

Proposed method

• Designing a cyber range environment that is intentionally incompatible with real-world enterprise systems to prevent unintended network propagation.
• Implementing a toolchain to convert in-development autonomous attack tools into executable test binaries for deployment in the Pandora environment.
• Using sandboxed virtualization and network isolation to ensure that all attack simulations remain contained within the test environment.
• Conducting compatibility testing with known malicious code to verify the system's ability to contain and analyze threats safely.
• Integrating support for AI-driven tools to allow realistic simulation of automated cyber attacks in a controlled setting.
• Validating the system through experiments that demonstrate both usability and safety under controlled conditions.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can autonomous cyber attack tools be safely tested during development without risking real-world infrastructure?
• RQ2 What architectural design patterns enable isolation of automated attack tools from production networks while maintaining realistic simulation fidelity?
• RQ3 Can a cyber range environment effectively contain and analyze malicious code without allowing propagation beyond the test boundary?
• RQ4 What mechanisms are required to convert in-development attack tools into executable test binaries for use in a secure simulation environment?
• RQ5 How does the proposed system compare to existing cyber ranges in terms of safety, usability, and compatibility with enterprise-like systems?

Key findings

• Pandora successfully isolated all attack simulations within the test environment, preventing any propagation to external or real-world systems.
• The system demonstrated compatibility with known malicious code during testing, confirming its ability to contain and analyze threats safely.
• The toolchain for converting in-development attack tools into executable test binaries proved effective and functional in experimental validation.
• Experiments confirmed that the environment supports realistic simulation of automated cyber attacks while maintaining strong security boundaries.
• The design effectively reduces the risk of unintended consequences during the development and testing of autonomous cyber attack tools.
• Pandora provides a viable, secure alternative to existing cyber ranges that lack robust isolation and safety mechanisms for AI-driven tools.