A survey: When moving target defense meets game theory

Moving target defense (MTD) can break through asymmetry between attackers and defenders. To improve the effectiveness of cybersecurity defense techniques, defense requires not only advanced and practical defense technologies but effective, scientific decision-making methods. Due to complex attacker–defender interaction, autonomous, automatic, accurate, and effective selection of the optimal strategy is a challenging topic in the field of MTD. The essence of cybersecurity lies in the interaction between the attacker and defender. Game theory is a useful mathematical tool for strategy selection in a competitive environment. It provides strong theoretical support for the analysis of cyberattack and defense behaviors and subsequent decision-making, and can significantly improve the decision-making ability of MTD. This study presents the basic concepts of MTD and game theory, followed by a literature review, to study MTD decision-making methods based on game theory from the dimensions of space, time, space–time, and bounded rationality. Limitations of MTD game decision-making studies are discussed, as well as research directions, to provide references for future research.