Attack and Interception in Networks

Francis Bloch, Kalyan Chatterjee and Bhaskar Dutta
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Kalyan Chatterjee: Pennsylvania State University

CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA

Abstract: This paper studies a game of attack and interception in a network, where a single attacker chooses a target and a path, and each node chooses a level of protection. We show that the Nash equilibrium of the game exists and is unique. It involves a mixed strategy of the attacker except when one target has a very high value relative to others. We characterize equilibrium attack paths and attack distributions as a function of the underlying network and target values. We also show that adding a link or increasing the value of a target may harm the attacker - a comparative statics e ect which is reminiscent of Braess's paradox in transportation economics. Finally, we contrast the Nash equilibrium with the equilibria of two variations of the model : one where nodes make sequential protection decisions upon observing the arrival of a suspicious object, and one where all nodes cooperate in defense.

Keywords: Keywords: Network interdiction; Networks; Attack and defense; Inspection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... _-_bhaskar_dutta.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Attack and interception in networks (2023)
Working Paper: Attack and Interception in Networks (2021)
Working Paper: Attack and Interception in Networks (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:wcreta:68

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