Game Theoretic Modeling of Malicious Users in Collaborative Networks

Abstract

Abstract-If a network is to operate successfully, its users need to collaborate. Collaboration takes the form of following a network protocol and involves some resource expenditure on the part of the user. Therefore, users cannot automatically be expected to follow the protocol if they are not forced to. The situation is exacerbated by the presence of malicious users whose objective is to damage the network and increase the cost incurred by the legitimate users. The legitimate users are, at least initially, unaware of the type (legitimate or malicious) of the other users.Our contribution is a model for the strategic interaction of legitimate and malicious users as described above. The model is based on repeated graphical games with incomplete information. We describe and analyze two specific instantiations, aiming to demonstrate the model's expressive power and tractability. The main benefit we see from using game theory for this essentially security problem is the ability to bound the damage caused by the malicious users.

MAC games for distributed wireless network security with incomplete information of selfish and malicious user types

“…The equilibrium SINR of selfish node 1 is given by (12) with P 1 from (13)- (14). The malicious attack of node 2 is more successful in reducing the SINR of selfish node 1 compared to the alternative selfish behavior of node 2 (under the assumption of h i ≥ σ 2 E i , i = 1, 2, for the non-zero transmission powers), if and only if…”

“…For both models of power control and random access, jamming games have been formulated for users with known selfish or malicious types reflected in their utilities [9]- [11]. The possible misbehavior of transmitters has been studied in [12]- [13] for intrusion detection and in [14] for packet forwarding without MAC interactions.…”

Competitive Sharing of Spectrum: Reservation Obfuscation and Verification Strategies

“…Packet-dropping attacks were studied in [24]. As further examples of game theory being applied to security and communication problems, we briefly mention [25] as a reference involving modeling malicious users in collaborative networks , [26] as a reference in which entities share information while engaged in information warfare, [27] for modeling attack-type uncertainty in a network, [28] for security threats involving multiple users in ad hoc networks, and [29] for resource attacks in networks using the ALOHA protocol. How secret communication can be affected by the fact that an adversary's capability to eavesdrop on a collection of communications from a base station to a set of users may be restricted and unknown to the transmitter was investigated in [30].…”

On event-triggered control of linear systems under periodic denial-of-service jamming attacks

“…The references [2], [12], [23], and [19] model the security problem as a (dynamic) zero-sum non-cooperative game, so they can predict the behavior of the attacker. The authors in [2], [23], and [19] study the vulnerability of the network towards deceptive attacks which differs from our problem.…”

“…The authors in [2], [23], and [19] study the vulnerability of the network towards deceptive attacks which differs from our problem. The closest reference to our work is [12], which studies a similar problem in a gametheoretic framework.…”