TY - GEN
T1 - Contagion and observability in security domains
AU - Bachrach, Yoram
AU - Draief, Moez
AU - Goyal, Sanjeev
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - We examine security domains where defenders choose their security levels in the face of a possible attack by an adversary who attempts to destroy as many of them as possible. Though the attacker only selects one target, and only has a certain probability of destroying it depending on that defender's security level, a successful attack may infect other defenders. By choosing a higher security level the defenders increase their probability of survival, but incur a higher cost of security. We assume that the adversary observes the security levels chosen by the defenders before selecting whom to attack. We show that under this assumption the defenders over-protect themselves, exhausting all their surplus, so optimal policy requires taxing security, as opposed to the subsidies recommended by alternative models for contagious attacks which do not take into account the attacker's ability to observe the defenders' choices.
AB - We examine security domains where defenders choose their security levels in the face of a possible attack by an adversary who attempts to destroy as many of them as possible. Though the attacker only selects one target, and only has a certain probability of destroying it depending on that defender's security level, a successful attack may infect other defenders. By choosing a higher security level the defenders increase their probability of survival, but incur a higher cost of security. We assume that the adversary observes the security levels chosen by the defenders before selecting whom to attack. We show that under this assumption the defenders over-protect themselves, exhausting all their surplus, so optimal policy requires taxing security, as opposed to the subsidies recommended by alternative models for contagious attacks which do not take into account the attacker's ability to observe the defenders' choices.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84897696490&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/Allerton.2013.6736686
DO - 10.1109/Allerton.2013.6736686
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84897696490
SN - 9781479934096
T3 - 2013 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Allerton 2013
SP - 1364
EP - 1371
BT - 2013 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Allerton 2013
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 51st Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Allerton 2013
Y2 - 2 October 2013 through 4 October 2013
ER -