Information Sharing Among Cyber Hackers in Successive Attacks

Kjell Hausken

International Game Theory Review (IGTR), 2017, vol. 19, issue 02, 1-33

Abstract: Supplementing the literature on information sharing between firms, the paper seeks to understand information sharing between hackers and how firms defend against increasingly sophisticated hackers. Each hacker seeks financial gain, mutually beneficial information exchange, and reputation gain. The two hackers’ attack and the firm’s defense are inverse U shaped in each other. A hacker shifts from attack to information sharing when attack is costly or the firm’s defense is cheap. The first hacker’s information sharing increases as both hackers focus increasingly on reputation gain. The two hackers largely increase their information sharing, with two exceptions. The second hacker’s attack is deterred by the first hacker’s reputation gain. The firm’s defense against the second hacker increases in the second hacker’s unit cost, decreases in the second hacker’s information sharing effectiveness and utilization of joint sharing, and also decreases in both hackers’ reputation gain. Policy and managerial implications are provided.

Keywords: Information sharing; cyber security; game theory; asset allocation; cyber war; contest success function; security investment; policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D74 D80 F50 H56 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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DOI: 10.1142/S0219198917500104

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