Epistemic Signaling Games for Cyber Deception with Asymmetric Recognition

TL;DR

This paper introduces epistemic signaling games that explicitly model asymmetric recognition in cyber deception, addressing the limitations of traditional signaling games that assume symmetric, public beliefs, and provides analytical characterization of equilibria.

Contribution

It develops a novel epistemic signaling game framework based on the Mertens-Zamir model to quantify asymmetric recognition in cyber deception scenarios.

Findings

Analytical characterization of game equilibria.

Explicit modeling of asymmetric recognition.

Enhanced understanding of cognitive gaps in cyber deception.

Abstract

This study provides a model of cyber deception with asymmetric recognition represented by private beliefs. Signaling games, which are often used in existing works, are built on the implicit premise that the receiver's belief is public information. However, this assumption, which leads to symmetric recognition, is unrealistic in adversarial decision making. For a precise evaluation of risks arising from cognitive gaps, this paper proposes epistemic signaling games based on the Mertens-Zamir model, which explicitly quantifies players' asymmetric recognition. Equilibria of the games are analytically characterized with an interpretation.