US Patent 8490193 System and method for probabilistic attack planning

A system and method for automated probabilistic planning of network attacks against infrastructures of computer networks and applications is provided. The embodiments automate the analysis and probabilistic planning of multi-step attacks to computer and application networks (in particular in the context of automating penetration tests), optimizing with respect to one of the following metrics: the probability of success of the actions, a numerical parameter that must be minimized (e.g., running time), or the number of logs generated by the control devices in the target network.