A Game-Theoretic Approach to Information-Flow Control via Protocol Composition
M\'ario S. Alvim, Konstantinos Chatzikokolakis, Yusuke Kawamoto and, Catuscia Palamidessi

TL;DR
This paper models information-flow control as a game between attacker and defender using protocol composition, analyzing algebraic properties and strategic interactions to minimize leakage.
Contribution
It introduces a game-theoretic framework for protocol composition in QIF, exploring algebraic properties and strategic advantages of different attacker and defender strategies.
Findings
Behavioral strategies outperform mixed strategies when the attacker moves first in hidden choice games.
A hierarchy of leakage levels is established among different game types.
Methods for computing optimal strategies at equilibrium are provided.
Abstract
In the inference attacks studied in Quantitative Information Flow (QIF), the attacker typically tries to interfere with the system in the attempt to increase its leakage of secret information. The defender, on the other hand, typically tries to decrease leakage by introducing some controlled noise. This noise introduction can be modeled as a type of protocol composition, i.e., a probabilistic choice among different protocols, and its effect on the amount of leakage depends heavily on whether or not this choice is visible to the attacker. In this work, we consider operators for modeling visible and hidden choice in protocol composition, and we study their algebraic properties. We then formalize the interplay between defender and attacker in a game-theoretic framework adapted to the specific issues of QIF, where the payoff is information leakage. We consider various kinds of leakage…
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