Automating the Deployment of Cyber Range with OpenStack

Abstract

Abstract Cyber Range is an experimental platform based on virtualization technology to construct a controlled simulation environment, providing a real-world simulation environment for cybersecurity personnel to conduct various practical exercises. The problem is that generating a virtual environment satisfying the requirements is labor-intensive and time-consuming. To resolve the above problem, this paper proposes a system to automate the deployment of a cyber range. In our method, the first step is to collect virtual machines (VMs) related to cybersecurity and extract relevant features. Then, machine learning is used to classify VMs to reduce the cost of manual VMs selection. Lastly, leveraging the popular OpenStack cloud platform as the deployment platform enhances the applicability of the cyber range. When it comes time to deploy a virtual environment, the instructor only needs to provide some brief description information of a virtual environment. Then, the system will automatically parse the description file to complete the automated deployment of the virtual environment. This system has been successfully applied to the cyber range of Sichuan University for daily teaching tasks.