DMAT : A New Network and Computer Attack Classification

With the rapid development of computer network and information technology, the Internet has been suffering from a variety of security attacks over the past few years. Attacks have become both numerous and complex, and the defender can not understand. In order to understand and defend against cyber attacks, it is necessary to understand the kind of attack. In this paper, we study computer and network attacks, and introduce a classification of them and propose a cyber attack classification called DMAT (Defense-oriented Multidimensional Attack Taxonomy). We use nine categories to describe the characteristic of the attack, which are attack target, attack impact, attack purpose, attack cost, attack exploiting, attack source, attack automation, attack loss and defense. The ninth category in the DMAT, classification by defense, is used to provide the defender with instructions of how to defense an attack. Compared to the existing taxonomies, our taxonomy efficiently classifies complex attacks and guide the defender to defense the possible attack.