Patent ID: 8413237

Claim:
A method of simulating multi-stage vulnerability across multiple systems, comprising: selecting, by a computer processor, models associated with a target system and at least one intermediate entity, the at least one intermediate entity and the target system being associated with different network zones; retrieving, by the computer processor, a list of vulnerability attributes based on the selected models from a public vulnerability attributes database; determining, by the computer processor, if at least one vulnerability attribute associated with the list of vulnerability attributes is present on the at least one intermediate entity connected to the target system; in response to the determining that the at least one vulnerability attribute is present on the at least one intermediate entity, first simulating, by the computer processor, a probing of the at least one intermediate entity; second simulating, by the computer processor, a probing of the target system based on the list of vulnerability attributes if the first simulated probing is successful; and generating, by the computer processor, an attack graph based on the results of the first and second simulating steps.