Selection of countermeasures against propagation of harmful information via Internet

Abstract

Abstract Today, Internet allows accessing and propagation various information. Some of this information can be undesired for particular user or even harmful. While there are quite a large number of systems to respond to unwanted and harmful information and some well-established set of countermeasures, such as filtering, blocking access, and notification, existing systems are often based on one type of countermeasures. From our point of view, there is a need for the technique of automated selection of optimal countermeasures to counteract undesired or harmful information on the Internet depending on the type of such information and characteristics and needs of the protected system. In this paper we propose the set of interconnected models, including threat model, countermeasure model and information object model, and countermeasure selection technique for protection against harmful information in Internet using these models. The proposed technique uses single-criteria optimization on the basis of introduced countermeasure selection index and allows selecting applicable and optimal countermeasures for the particular system from specific threats. The application of the technique is demonstrated on the experiments.