IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v280y2020i3p1122-1129.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Attacking and defending multiple valuable secrets in a big data world

Author

Listed:
  • Konrad, Kai A.

Abstract

This paper studies the attack-and-defence game between a web user and a whole set of players over this user’s ‘valuable secrets.’ The number and type of these valuable secrets are the user’s private information. Attempts to tap information as well as privacy protection are costly. The multiplicity of secrets is of strategic value for the holders of these secrets. Users with few secrets keep their secrets private with some probability, even though they do not protect them. Users with many secrets protect their secrets at a cost that is smaller than the value of the secrets protected. The analysis also accounts for multiple redundant information channels with cost asymmetries, relating the analysis to attack-and-defence games with a weakest link.

Suggested Citation

  • Konrad, Kai A., 2020. "Attacking and defending multiple valuable secrets in a big data world," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 280(3), pages 1122-1129.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:280:y:2020:i:3:p:1122-1129
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2019.07.064
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221719306435
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.07.064?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jay Pil Choi & Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Jaesoo Kim, 2016. "Group Contests with Internal Conflict and Power Asymmetry," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 118(4), pages 816-840, October.
    2. repec:wly:soecon:v:83:1:y:2016:p:105-125 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Konrad, Kai A., 2009. "Strategy and Dynamics in Contests," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199549603.
    4. Hausken, Kjell & Bier, Vicki M., 2011. "Defending against multiple different attackers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 211(2), pages 370-384, June.
    5. Vicki Bier & Santiago Oliveros & Larry Samuelson, 2007. "Choosing What to Protect: Strategic Defensive Allocation against an Unknown Attacker," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(4), pages 563-587, August.
    6. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 1996. "The all-pay auction with complete information," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 209-223, Springer.
    7. Herbst, Luisa & Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2015. "Endogenous group formation in experimental contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 163-189.
    8. Arun Vishwanath & Weiai Xu & Zed Ngoh, 2018. "How people protect their privacy on facebook: A cost†benefit view," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 69(5), pages 700-709, May.
    9. Belleflamme, Paul & Vergote, Wouter, 2016. "Monopoly price discrimination and privacy: The hidden cost of hiding," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 141-144.
    10. Schipper, Burkhard C. & Woo, Hee Yeul, 2019. "Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 14(1), pages 41-88, January.
    11. Arye L. Hillman & John G. Riley, 1989. "Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 17-39, March.
    12. Hausken, Kjell, 2017. "Defense and attack for interdependent systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 256(2), pages 582-591.
    13. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2014. "Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning," Working Papers 148, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    14. Leigh Clark & Sherry Roberts, 2010. "Employer’s Use of Social Networking Sites: A Socially Irresponsible Practice," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 95(4), pages 507-525, September.
    15. Alessandro Acquisti & Curtis Taylor & Liad Wagman, 2016. "The Economics of Privacy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(2), pages 442-492, June.
    16. Jentzsch, Nicola, 2016. "State-of-the-Art of the Economics of Cyber-Security and Privacy," EconStor Research Reports 126223, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. Dziubiński, Marcin Konrad & Goyal, Sanjeev, 2017. "How do you defend a network?," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), January.
    18. Dziubiński, Marcin & Goyal, Sanjeev, 2013. "Network design and defence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 30-43.
    19. Daniel G. Arce & Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2012. "Weakest‐link attacker‐defender games with multiple attack technologies," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(6), pages 457-469, September.
    20. Davis, Douglas D & Reilly, Robert J, 1999. "Rent-Seeking with Non-identical Sharing Rules: An Equilibrium Rescued," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 100(1-2), pages 31-38, July.
    21. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Skaperdas, Stergios (ed.), 2012. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195392777.
    22. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Iryna Topolyan, 2016. "The Attack-And-Defense Group Contests: Best Shot Versus Weakest Link," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(1), pages 548-557, January.
    23. Kjell Hausken, 2014. "Choosing what to protect when attacker resources and asset valuations are uncertain," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 24(3), pages 23-44.
    24. Michelle Richey & Aparna Gonibeed & M. N. Ravishankar, 2018. "The Perils and Promises of Self-Disclosure on Social Media," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 425-437, June.
    25. Levitin, Gregory & Hausken, Kjell & Dai, Yuanshun, 2014. "Optimal defense with variable number of overarching and individual protections," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 81-90.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Konrad, Kai A., 2024. "The collective security dilemma of preemptive strikes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 313(3), pages 1191-1199.
    2. Bose, Gautam & Konrad, Kai A., 2020. "Devil take the hindmost: Deflecting attacks to other defenders," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    3. Nicola Dimitri, 2020. "Skills, Efficiency, and Timing in a Simple Attack and Defense Model," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 17(3), pages 227-234, September.
    4. Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2023. "How to preempt attacks in multi-front conflict with limited resources," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(1), pages 493-500.
    5. Welburn, Jonathan & Grana, Justin & Schwindt, Karen, 2023. "Cyber deterrence with imperfect attribution and unverifiable signaling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(3), pages 1399-1416.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2023. "How to preempt attacks in multi-front conflict with limited resources," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(1), pages 493-500.
    2. Bose, Gautam & Konrad, Kai A., 2020. "Devil take the hindmost: Deflecting attacks to other defenders," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    3. Dan Kovenock & Brian Roberson, 2018. "The Optimal Defense Of Networks Of Targets," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(4), pages 2195-2211, October.
    4. Hausken, Kjell, 2024. "Fifty Years of Operations Research in Defense," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 318(2), pages 355-368.
    5. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Dongryul Lee & Iryna Topolyan, 2016. "The Max‐Min Group Contest: Weakest‐link (Group) All‐Pay Auction," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(1), pages 105-125, July.
    6. Hunt, Kyle & Zhuang, Jun, 2024. "A review of attacker-defender games: Current state and paths forward," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 313(2), pages 401-417.
    7. Barbieri, Stefano & Malueg, David A., 2016. "Private-information group contests: Best-shot competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 219-234.
    8. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    9. Konrad, Kai A., 2011. "Strategic aspects of fighting in alliances," Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" SP II 2011-105, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    10. Kai A. Konrad & Florian Morath, 2018. "To Deter Or To Moderate? Alliance Formation In Contests With Incomplete Information," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1447-1463, July.
    11. Boyer, Pierre C. & Konrad, Kai A. & Roberson, Brian, 2017. "Targeted campaign competition, loyal voters, and supermajorities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 49-62.
    12. Send, Jonas, 2020. "Conflict between non-exclusive groups," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 858-874.
    13. Nicola Dimitri, 2020. "Skills, Efficiency, and Timing in a Simple Attack and Defense Model," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 17(3), pages 227-234, September.
    14. Qingqing Zhai & Rui Peng & Jun Zhuang, 2020. "Defender–Attacker Games with Asymmetric Player Utilities," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(2), pages 408-420, February.
    15. Pau Balart & Sabine Flamand & Oliver Gürtler & Orestis Troumpounis, 2018. "Sequential choice of sharing rules in collective contests," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 703-724, October.
    16. Baik, Kyung Hwan & Jung, Hanjoon Michael, 2021. "Contests with multiple alternative prizes: Public-good/bad prizes and externalities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 103-116.
    17. Francis Bloch, 2009. "Endogenous formation of alliances in conflicts," Working Papers hal-00435387, HAL.
    18. Dongryul Lee & Pilwon Kim, 2022. "Group formation in a dominance-seeking contest," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(1), pages 39-68, January.
    19. Ríos Insua, David & Cano, Javier & Pellot, Michael & Ortega, Ricardo, 2016. "Multithreat multisite protection: A security case study," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 252(3), pages 888-899.
    20. Franke, Jörg & Leininger, Wolfgang & Wasser, Cédric, 2018. "Optimal favoritism in all-pay auctions and lottery contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 22-37.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Big-data; Privacy; Conflict; Valuable secrets; Attack-and-defence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D18 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Protection
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:280:y:2020:i:3:p:1122-1129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.