A Theoretical Model for the Average Impact of Attacks on Billing Infrastructures

The 0-delay is a mathematical model to evaluate the average impact of attacks on a billing infrastructure, that is an infrastructure that supports the billing of a set of users for some service. The model describes the search for vulnerabilities as a competition between a set of attackers and one of defenders, that are interested, respectively, in attacking and patching the infrastructure. As implied by its name, the model assumes that both the attack and the patching occur as soon as the vulnerability is discovered. The model assumes that the impact increases with the size of the vulnerability window, the time in between the discovery of the vulnerability by an attacker and by a defender and it relates this size to the numbers of attackers and of defenders. After describing the model, we describe some applications and generalizations.