Analyzing Incentives for Protocol Compliance in Complex Domains: A Case Study of Introduction-Based Routing
This addresses protocol compliance analysis for network security researchers, but it is incremental as it extends existing game-theoretic methods with simulation for more complex domains.
The paper tackles the problem of analyzing incentives for compliance with network protocols in complex scenarios by proposing a simulation-based game-theoretic approach, applied to introduction-based routing, finding that compliance benefits are strong for attacked nodes and equilibrium levels support security goals.
Formal analyses of incentives for compliance with network protocols often appeal to game-theoretic models and concepts. Applications of game-theoretic analysis to network security have generally been limited to highly stylized models, where simplified environments enable tractable study of key strategic variables. We propose a simulation-based approach to game-theoretic analysis of protocol compliance, for scenarios with large populations of agents and large policy spaces. We define a general procedure for systematically exploring a structured policy space, directed expressly to resolve the qualitative classification of equilibrium behavior as compliant or non-compliant. The techniques are illustrated and exercised through an extensive case study analyzing compliance incentives for introduction-based routing. We find that the benefits of complying with the protocol are particularly strong for nodes subject to attack, and the overall compliance level achieved in equilibrium, while not universal, is sufficient to support the desired security goals of the protocol.