A Survey on Moving Target Defense for Networks: A Practical View

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, your topic is interesting, manuscript is well structured and I appreciate your effort. However; following comments should be accommodated prior to further processing of the article.

1.       Refer to title: Check the affiliation of author 1.

2.       Refer to abstract: Recheck the sentence “Furthermore, introduction of such solutions as Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Programmable Acceleration Cards makes it possible to move MTD concept to next level”.

3.       Refer to methodology: It would be better to use PRISMA model and show how the data is extracted for this article? https://prisma-statement.org

4.       Refer to sub-section 2.2.2: What is Network based? Use complete and understand phrases.

5.       Refer to whole article: Many of the sub-headings are not properly synchronized in article structure with proper section/sub-section numbering. Recheck and ensure all.

6.       Refer to line # 1037: Authors have stated that “Analyzing papers surveyed in previous chapter we were able…”. They should use section or sub-section as it is an article instead of thesis.

7.       Refer to whole article: A careful English proof reading is required to remove grammatical and typing mistakes.  

Good luck.    

Author Response

Thank you for your review, we have incorporated your suggestions into our survey. Below is our point-by-point respons:

Point 1: Refer to title: Check the affiliation of author 1.
Response 1: Author 1 is now listed as "Independent Researcher".

Point 2: Refer to abstract: Recheck the sentence “Furthermore, introduction of such solutions as Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Programmable Acceleration Cards makes it possible to move MTD concept to next level”.
Response 2: We have expanded that statement by adding another sentence clarifying what we mean by "next level": "Furthermore, introduction of such solutions as Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Programmable Acceleration Cards makes it possible to move MTD concept to next level. Applying hardware acceleration to existing concepts or developing new, dedicated methods will offer more robust, efficient and secure solutions."

Point 3: Refer to methodology: It would be better to use PRISMA model and show how the data is extracted for this article? https://prisma-statement.org
Response 3: Since the goal of our review is rather broad (we try to discuss current status of research in MTD field in context of real life scenarios, as well as discuss the opportunities and benefits of adding potential support in hardware) we decided not to use PRISMA model, that has been designed primarily for systematic reviews, where the goal is to answer a specific and focused question. However we have extended section 2.1 to better clarify how we extracted the data for our paper.

Point 4: Refer to sub-section 2.2.2: What is Network based? Use complete and understand phrases.
Response 4: We exchanged "network based" with "network level".

Point 5: Refer to whole article: Many of the sub-headings are not properly synchronized in article structure with proper section/sub-section numbering. Recheck and ensure all.
Response 5: We've noticed mistake in section numbering in Chapter 3, making sections go one level deeper than they should. Thus previous section 3.1 was removed and now serves as a brief introduction to chapter 3, while 3.1.1 has became new 3.1 and "Address and port mutation", "Route mutation" etc. became 3.1.1, 3.1.2 ... Also, we've renamed Chapter 3 to be called "Trends in MTD" instead of "Results" as we believe it suits its contents better.

Point 6: Refer to line # 1037: Authors have stated that “Analyzing papers surveyed in previous chapter we were able…”. They should use section or sub-section as it is an article instead of thesis.
Response 6: We've changed that sentence to "Analyzing papers surveyed in Section 3.1 we were able…".

Point 7: Refer to whole article: A careful English proof reading is required to remove grammatical and typing mistakes.
Response 7: We have proof read the article again and corrected several mistakes.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors proposed a Survey on Moving Target Defense for Networks. The authors have proposed a novel survey with satisfactory results.  However, there are some minor concerns that need to be addressed before the paper can be accepted for publication. The concerns is/are as follows:

1. Authors should include the method/techniques used against attacks in the ref. [94], [104],  [97] [111], [86] and [78] in the section 3.1.5. Threat model.

Author Response

Thank you for your review, we have incorporated your suggestions into our survey. Below is our point-by-point respons:
Point 1: Authors should include the method/techniques used against attacks in the ref. [94], [104],  [97] [111], [86] and [78] in the section 3.1.5. Threat model.
Response 1: We have extended section "Threat model" so that it better describes the threat model proposed in mentioned articles.

Reviewer 3 Report

Devoting to the state of the art of moving target defense technology for computer networks.

This paper is considered a comprehensive, well-structured, qualified survey with good linguistic quality and of referential value to the readership of electronics.

Author Response

We are thankful for your kind review.

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper presents a review on Moving Target Defense (MTD). The paper is quite well written and comprehensive. However, there are already a number of other MTD review papers published previously. The authors may want to briefly explain how is this review paper different from existing review papers (other than being more recent and therefore may review more recent papers).

Other than that, there are also a number minor language errors that may need to be corrected before the paper can be published. Some examples are:

1. Line 149: "combined with asynchronously"

2. Line 485: "Introduces" (should be Introduced)

3. Line 491: "requires a use of shared session key" ('a' should be 'the')

4. Line 810: "relatively easy to spot by detect"

Author Response

Thank you for your review, we have incorporated your suggestions into our survey. Below is our point-by-point respons:
Point 1: Line 149: "combined with asynchronously"
Response 1: We've corrected that to "combined with pseudo-random timing".

Point 2: Line 485: "Introduces" (should be Introduced)
Response 2: We have noticed that grammar mistake in two places in text and have corrected both.

Point 3: "requires a use of shared session key" ('a' should be 'the')
Response 3: We have corrected that mistake in text.

Point 4:  "relatively easy to spot by detect"
Response 4: We have corrected that to "relatively easy to detect".

Point 5: However, there are already a number of other MTD review papers published previously. The authors may want to briefly explain how is this review paper different from existing review papers (other than being more recent and therefore may review more recent papers).
Response 5: Indeed, other reviews can be found in the literature.  Our goal was to discuss the current state of MTD research in the context of real-world scenarios, as well as the benefits of adding potential support in hardware. Section 1.2 was intended to describe our contribution. However, it may not be presented clearly enough, so we have revised it slightly, adding references to other research in the field to make it stand out better.