{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,9]],"date-time":"2026-07-09T04:57:04Z","timestamp":1783573024888,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,16]],"date-time":"2025-02-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1739664000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Scientific Research Project of the China Academy of Railway Sciences Co., Ltd.","award":["2024YJ224"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2024YJ224"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>With more China railway business information systems migrating to the China Railway Cloud Center (CRCC), the attack surface is expanding and there are increasing security threats for the CRCC to deal with. Cyber Mimic Defense (CMD) technology, as an active defense strategy, can counter these threats by constructing a Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy (DHR) architecture. However, there are at least two challenges posed to the DHR deployment, namely, the limited number of available schedulable heterogeneous resources and memorization-based attacks. This paper aims to address these two challenges to improve the CRCC-DHR reliability and then facilitate the DHR deployment. By reliability, we mean that the CRCC-DHR with the limited number of available heterogeneous resources can effectively resist memorization-based attacks. We first propose three metrics for assessing the reliability of the CRCC-DHR architecture. Then, we propose an incomplete-information-based game model to capture the relationships between attackers and defenders. Finally, based on the proposed metrics and the captured relationship, we propose a redundant-heterogeneous-resources scheduling algorithm, called the Entropy Weight Scheduling Algorithm (REWS). We evaluate the capability of REWS with the three existing algorithms through simulations. The results show that REWS can achieve a better reliability than the other algorithms. In addition, REWS demonstrates a lower time complexity compared with the existing algorithms.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e27020208","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,17]],"date-time":"2025-02-17T04:40:25Z","timestamp":1739767225000},"page":"208","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Improving the CRCC-DHR Reliability: An Entropy-Based Mimic-Defense-Resource Scheduling Algorithm"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"27","author":[{"given":"Xinghua","family":"Wu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China"},{"name":"Institute of Computing Technology, China Academy of Railway Sciences, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mingzhe","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computing Technology, China Academy of Railway Sciences, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yun","family":"Cai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information Science and Technology, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2975-8857","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiaolin","family":"Chang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yong","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Computing Technology, China Academy of Railway Sciences, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"(2024, August 16). Technical Expansion Requirements of the Railway Network-Security Protection of Railway Network Cloud Platform. Available online: https:\/\/www.ebiaozhun.com\/std\/513cd09e426641369584cec34c7bdff5.html."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"(2024, August 16). The Rise of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Why Traditional Security Solutions Fall Short. Available online: https:\/\/thehackernews.com\/2024\/10\/rise-of-zero-day-vulnerabilities.html."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5740","DOI":"10.1109\/TITS.2021.3057404","article-title":"Cascading Failure in Multiple Critical Infrastructure Interdependent Networks of Syncretic Railway System","volume":"23","author":"Liu","year":"2022","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"108538","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ress.2022.108538","article-title":"Resilience assessment of railway networks: Combining infrastructure restoration and transport management","volume":"224","author":"Szymula","year":"2022","journal-title":"Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"110776","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2024.110776","article-title":"Detecting the cyber-physical-social cooperated APTs in high-DER-penetrated smart grids: Threats, current work and challenges","volume":"254","author":"Lu","year":"2024","journal-title":"Comput. Networks"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"94","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infsof.2018.07.008","article-title":"Attack surface definitions: A systematic literature review","volume":"104","author":"Theisen","year":"2018","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101734","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cose.2020.101734","article-title":"APT datasets and attack modeling for automated detection methods: A review","volume":"92","author":"Kleb","year":"2020","journal-title":"Comput. Secur."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"100521","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijcip.2022.100521","article-title":"APT attacks on industrial control systems: A tale of three incidents","volume":"37","author":"Kumar","year":"2022","journal-title":"Int. J. Crit. Infrastruct. Prot."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1152","DOI":"10.1109\/TPWRS.2020.3010365","article-title":"Cost-benefit analysis of moving target defense in power grids","volume":"36","author":"Lakshminaraytana","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Power Syst."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"709","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2019.2963791","article-title":"Toward Proactive, Adaptive Defense: A Survey on Moving Target Defense","volume":"22","author":"Cho","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7818","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2020.3040358","article-title":"MTD, Where Art Thou? A Systematic Review of Moving Target Defense Techniques for IoT","volume":"8","author":"Navas","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"422","DOI":"10.1016\/j.dcan.2021.07.006","article-title":"Dynamic defenses in cyber security: Techniques, methods and challenges","volume":"8","author":"Zheng","year":"2022","journal-title":"Digit. Commun. Netw."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"273","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-29844-9_7","article-title":"DHR Architecture","volume":"Volume 2","author":"Wu","year":"2020","journal-title":"Cyberspace Mimic Defense"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"102884","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ipm.2022.102884","article-title":"An improved algorithm for practical byzantine fault tolerance to large-scale consortium chain","volume":"59","author":"Chen","year":"2022","journal-title":"Inf. Process. Manag."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ins.2020.12.077","article-title":"DRBFT: Delegated randomization Byzantine fault tolerance consensus protocol for blockchains","volume":"559","author":"Zhan","year":"2021","journal-title":"Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3387","DOI":"10.1109\/TDSC.2021.3095544","article-title":"DBFT: A Byzantine Fault Tolerance Protocol With Graceful Performance Degradation","volume":"19","author":"Zhang","year":"2022","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Dependable Secur. Comput."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2628","DOI":"10.1109\/TCYB.2023.3285903","article-title":"Self-Healing Fault-Tolerant Control for High-Order Fully Actuated Systems Against Sensor Faults: A Redundancy Framework","volume":"54","author":"Cai","year":"2024","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Cybern."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1145\/3589950","article-title":"Software Fault Tolerance in Real-Time Systems: Identifying the Future Research Questions","volume":"55","author":"Reghenzani","year":"2023","journal-title":"ACM Comput. Surv."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"179","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eng.2021.05.015","article-title":"Cyberspace Endogenous Safety and Security","volume":"15","author":"Wu","year":"2022","journal-title":"Engineering"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ying, F., Zhao, S., and Wang, J. (2024). A Security Information Transmission Method Based on DHR for Seafloor Observation Network. Sensors, 24.","DOI":"10.3390\/s24041147"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kang, Y., Zhang, Q., Jiang, B., and Bu, Y. (2024). A Differentially Private Framework for the Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundant Architecture System in Cyberspac. Electronics, 13.","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics13101805"},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"516","DOI":"10.1049\/cje.2021.04.005","article-title":"Secure Cloud Architecture for 5G Core Network","volume":"30","author":"Li","year":"2021","journal-title":"Chin. J. Electron."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1287","DOI":"10.1109\/TNSM.2021.3071774","article-title":"Intrinsic Security and Self-Adaptive Cooperative Protection Enabling Cloud Native Network Slicing","volume":"18","author":"Wu","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manag."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2019","DOI":"10.1109\/TII.2022.3210139","article-title":"AI-Assisted Trustworthy Architecture for Industrial IoT Based on Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy","volume":"19","author":"Wang","year":"2023","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Ind. Inform."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"103596","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2023.103596","article-title":"Dynamic Web Application Firewall Detection supported by Cyber Mimic","volume":"213","author":"Sepczuk","year":"2023","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"180481","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2020.3024847","article-title":"A Novel Model of Mimic Defense Based on Minimal L-Order Error Probability","volume":"8","author":"Chen","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_27","first-page":"1","article-title":"Dynamic Scheduling Algorithm in Cyber Mimic Defense Architecture of Volunteer Computing","volume":"21","author":"Li","year":"2021","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Internet Technol."},{"key":"ref_28","first-page":"2300407","article-title":"An Adaptive Multiexecutors Scheduling Algorithm Based on Heterogeneity for Cyberspace Mimic Defense","volume":"13","author":"Zhu","year":"2022","journal-title":"Secur. Commun. Netw."},{"key":"ref_29","first-page":"212304","article-title":"A DHR executor selection algorithm based on historical credibility and dissimilarity clustering","volume":"66","author":"Shao","year":"2023","journal-title":"Sci. China"},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"226","DOI":"10.1049\/iet-ifs.2017.0086","article-title":"Mimic defense: A designed-in cybersecurity defense framework","volume":"12","author":"Hu","year":"2018","journal-title":"IET Inf. Secur."},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"68376","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2021.3077075","article-title":"Optimal Strategy for Cyberspace Mimic Defense Based on Game Theory","volume":"9","author":"Chen","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4186","DOI":"10.1109\/TNSM.2023.3275986","article-title":"Game Analysis and Optimization for Evolutionary Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy","volume":"20","author":"Shi","year":"2023","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manag."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4912","DOI":"10.1109\/TNSM.2024.3387725","article-title":"Unveiling the Strategic Defense Mechanisms in Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy Architecture","volume":"21","author":"Hu","year":"2024","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manag."},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"57","DOI":"10.1109\/TSC.2024.3436673","article-title":"An Active Defense Adjudication Method Based on Adaptive Anomaly Sensing for Mimic IoT","volume":"18","author":"Shao","year":"2025","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wu, X., Wang, M., Shen, J., and Gong, Y. (2024). Towards Double-Layer Dynamic Heterogeneous Redundancy Architecture for Reliable Railway Passenger Service System. Electronics, 13.","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics13183592"}],"container-title":["Entropy"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1099-4300\/27\/2\/208\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,9]],"date-time":"2025-10-09T16:35:37Z","timestamp":1760027737000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1099-4300\/27\/2\/208"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,16]]},"references-count":35,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2]]}},"alternative-id":["e27020208"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/e27020208","relation":{},"ISSN":["1099-4300"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1099-4300","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,16]]}}}