Stochastic games for security in networks with interdependent nodes

Kien Nguyen; Tansu Alpcan; Tamer Başar

1st International Conference on Game Theory for Networks

Research Article

Stochastic games for security in networks with interdependent nodes

Cite: BibTeX Plain Text

@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137463,
    author={Kien Nguyen and Tansu Alpcan and Tamer Başar},
    title={Stochastic games for security in networks with interdependent nodes},
    proceedings={1st International Conference on Game Theory for Networks},
    publisher={IEEE},
    proceedings_a={GAMENETS},
    year={2009},
    month={6},
    keywords={},
    doi={10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137463}
}

Kien Nguyen
Tansu Alpcan
Tamer Başar
Year: 2009
Stochastic games for security in networks with interdependent nodes
GAMENETS
IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137463

Kien Nguyen¹^,*, Tansu Alpcan²^,*, Tamer Başar¹^,*

1: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
2: Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, Berlin, Germany.

*Contact email: knguyen4@illinois.edu, tansu.alpcan@telekom.de, basar1@illinois.edu

Abstract

This paper studies a stochastic game theoretic approach to security and intrusion detection in communication and computer networks. Specifically, an Attacker and a Defender take part in a two-player game over a network of nodes whose security assets and vulnerabilities are correlated. Such a network can be modeled using weighted directed graphs with the edges representing the influence among the nodes. The game can be formulated as a non-cooperative zero-sum or nonzero-sum stochastic game. However, due to correlation among the nodes, if some nodes are compromised, the effective security assets and vulnerabilities of the remaining ones will not stay the same in general, which leads to complex system dynamics. We examine existence, uniqueness, and structure of the solution and also provide numerical examples to illustrate our model.

Published: 2009-06-26
Publisher: IEEE

: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/GAMENETS.2009.5137463