Title
A game-theoretic model for resource allocation with deception and defense efforts
Abstract
This paper develops a strategy for assisting two players in allocating multiple resources in a strategic sequential game. The defender first needs to allocate deception and defense efforts among targets to deceive the attacker and strengthen the target, respectively. Then, the attacker chooses a type of threat and a target to attack. The defender aims at mitigating the possible damage to the targets, whereas the attacker strives to cause maximum damage to the targets. Traditional modeling approaches typically focus only on the defender's homogeneous resource in defense and are not well suited to effectively capture the complex interplay between players. Given scarce resources, a game-theoretic model is proposed for determining optimal strategies for both players. The key novel features of this model include: (1) the attacker's learning and the defender's counter-learning efforts are considered; (2) trade-offs between deception and defense efforts among different targets for the defender are investigated; and (3) sensitive analysis is carried out to see how different parameters can affect the equilibrium results. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the procedure of this game-theoretic model and show its effectiveness. The results can provide additional insights for defense and deception strategies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1002/sys.21479
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Keywords
Field
DocType
deception and defense,game-theoretic model,learning and counter-learning,resource allocation,sequential game,trade-off
Economics,Financial economics,Deception,Microeconomics,Game theoretic,Resource allocation,Sequential game
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
22.0
3.0
1098-1241
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
17
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Xiao-Xiong Zhang1122.91
Xiaoxiong Zhang210.36
Keith W. Hipel313321.57
Keith W. Hipel413321.57
K. W. Hipel5812116.70
Bingfeng Ge64611.25
Yuejin Tan711.04