Abstract
Connections between individuals facilitate the exchange of goods, resources, and information and create benefits. These connections may be exploited by adversaries to spread their attacks as well. What is the optimal way to design and defend networks in the face of attacks? We develop a model with a Designer and an Adversary. The Designer moves first and chooses a network and an allocation of defence resources across nodes. The Adversary then allocates attack resources on nodes; if an attack succeeds then the Adversary decides on how successful resources should navigate the network. We obtain two principal results. One, we show that in a wide variety of circumstances a star network with all defence resources allocated to the central node is optimal for the Designer. Two, we identify conditions on the technology of conflict, network value function, and the resource configuration for which networks with multiple hubs/components are optimal.
Highlights
Connections between individuals, cities, countries and computers facilitate the exchange of goods, resources and information and generate value
We identify conditions on the technology of conflict, network value function and the resource configuration for which networks with multiple hubs/components are optimal
We model the conflict between defense and attack resources on a network node as a Tullock contest.[4]
Summary
Connections between individuals, cities, countries and computers facilitate the exchange of goods, resources and information and generate value. These connections may serve as a conduit for the spread of damaging attacks. Connectivity facilitates communication but is used by hackers, hostile governments and firms, and ‘botnet’ herders to spread viruses and worms which compromise user privacy and jeopardize the functioning of the entire system.[1] As energy, communication, travel, consumer interaction increasingly adopt digital networks, cybersecurity has emerged as a major priority.[2] At the heart of these developments is the question of how to design and defend large scale networks
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