text: We introduce a new simulation platform called Insight, created to design and simulate cyber-attacks against large arbitrary target scenarios. Insight has surprisingly low hardware and configuration requirements, while making the simulation a realistic experience from the attacker's standpoint. The scenarios include a crowd of simulated actors: network devices, hardware devices, software applications, protocols, users, etc. A novel characteristic of this tool is to simulate vulnerabilities (including 0-days) and exploits, allowing an attacker to compromise machines and use them as pivoting stones to continue the attack. A user can test and modify complex scenarios, with several interconnected networks, where the attacker has no initial connectivity with the objective of the attack. We give a concise description of this new technology, and its possible uses in the security research field, such as pentesting training, study of the impact of 0-days vulnerabilities, evaluation of security countermeasures, and risk assessment tool.
  @cite_9: NeSSi network security simulator is a novel network simulation tool which incorporates a variety of features relevant to network security distinguishing it from general-purpose network simulators. Its capabilities such as profile-based automated attack generation, traffic analysis and support for detection algorithm plug-ins allow it to be used for security research and evaluation purposes. NeSSi has been successfully used for testing intrusion detection algorithms, conducting network security analysis and developing overlay security frameworks. NeSSi is built upon the agent framework JIAC, resulting in a distributed and extensible architecture. In this paper, we provide an overview of the NeSSi architecture as well as its distinguishing features and briefly demonstrate its application to current security research projects.
summary: In contrast, high interaction honeypots'' and virtualization technologies (e.g., VMware, Xen, Qemu) execute native system and application code, but the price of this fidelity is quite high. For example, the RINSE approach @cite_9 is implemented over the iSSFNet network simulator, which runs on parallel machines to support real-time simulation of large-scale networks. All these solutions share the same principle of simulating almost every aspect of a real machine or real network, but share the similar problems too: expensive configuration cost and expensive hardware and software licenses. Moreover, most of these solutions are not fully compatible with standard network protections (e.g., firewalls, IDSs), suffering a lack of integration between all security actors in complex cyber-attack scenarios.