A Game Theoretic Model for Network Virus Protection

TL;DR

This paper models network virus propagation using game theory, analyzing how individual protection strategies and virus source dynamics influence overall network security and equilibrium outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces a non-cooperative game model for virus protection, characterizes equilibria, and examines the effects of protection costs and virus source dynamics on network security.

Findings

Equilibrium strategies depend on protection costs and virus source influence.

Higher protection prices reduce the likelihood of nodes adopting antivirus.

Dynamic virus dissemination modeled with the Influence Linear Threshold (HILT) enhances realism.

Abstract

The network virus propagation is influenced by various factors, and some of them are neglected in most of the existed models in the literature. In this paper, we study the network virus propagation based on the the epidemiological viewpoint. We assume that nodes can be equipped with protection against virus and the security of a node depends not only on his protection strategy but also by those chosen by other nodes in the network. A crucial aspect is whether owners of device, e.g., either smartphones, machines or tablets, are willing to be equipped to protect themselves or to take the risk to be contaminated in order to avoid the payment for a new antivirus. We model the interaction between nodes as a non-cooperative games where the node has two strategies: either to update the antivirus or not. To this aim, we provide a full characterization of the equilibria of the game and we investigate the impact of the price of protection on the equilibrium as well as the efficiency of the protection at equilibrium. Further we consider more realistic scenarios in which the dynamic of sources that disseminate the virus, evolves as function of the popularity of virus. In this work, the interest in the virus by sources evolves under the Influence Linear Threshold (HILT) model.