Attack and Defense Strategies in Complex Networks Based on Game Theory

Abstract

To investigate the attack and defense strategies in complex networks, the authors propose a two-player zero-sum static game model with complete information which considers attack and defense strategies simultaneously. The authors assume that both the attacker and defender have two typical strategies: Targeted strategy and random strategy. The authors explore the Nash equilibriums of the attacker-defender game and demonstrate that when the attacker’s attack resources are not so significantly abundant as the defender?s resources, there exists a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium in both model networks and real-world networks, in which the defender protects the hub targets with large degrees preferentially, while the attacker prefers selecting the targets randomly. When the attack resources are much higher than defense resources, both the attacker and the defender adopt the targeted strategy in equilibriums. This paper provides a new theoretical framework for the study of attack and defense strategies in complex networks.