Botnet economics and devising defence schemes from attackers own reward processes

TL;DR

This paper develops a game-theoretic model of botnet economics to design cost-effective defense strategies by analyzing attacker reward processes and business models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel economic model combining attacker business analysis with game theory to inform defense mechanisms against botnets.

Findings

Identifies economic defense strategies based on reward break-even analysis.

Develops a quantitative model applicable to real-world cases like online casinos.

Provides insights into optimal defense strategies using equilibrium principles.

Abstract

This paper focuses on botnet economics and design of defensive strategies. It takes the view that by combining scarce information on the attackers business models, with rational economic analysis of these business processes, one can identify design rules for economic defense mechanisms which the target can implement, often in a cheap way in addition to technical means. A short survey of game theory in the security area, is followed by a real case of an Internet casino. This leads to develop a model, applicable to this case and others, which is presented first qualitatively then quantitatively. This allows carrying out different analyses based on different equilibrium or termination principles; the ones studied are reward break-even analysis, and Max-Min analysis from game theory, for the target and the attackers. On that basis, a number of specific economic and information led defense strategies are identified which can be further studied using the model and specific adaptations to other data or cases.