Marc Lelarge, INRIA-ENS

Location :

ENS, 45 rue d'Ulm, Paris.
salle de réunion de l'équipe TREC.

Abstract :

Malicious softwares or malwares for short have become a major security threat. While originating 
in criminal behaviour, their impact are also influenced by the decisions of legitimate end 
users. Getting agents in the Internet, and in networks in general, to invest in and deploy 
security features and protocols is a challenge, in particular because of economic reasons arising 
from the presence of network externalities. Our goal is to model and quantify the impact of
such externalities on the investment in security features in a network.
We study a network of interconnected agents, which are subject to epidemic risks such as those
caused by propagating viruses and worms. Each agent can decide whether or not to invest some
amount to self-protect and deploy security solutions which decreases the probability of contagion.
Borrowing ideas from random graphs theory, we solve explicitly this ’micro’-model and compute the
fulfilled expectations equilibria. We are able to compute the network externalities as a function of
the parameters of the epidemic. We show that for a weak protection, the network may exhibit a large 
'price of anarchy'. We also look at interaction with the security supplier and consider the problem of 
designing incentives for user behavior thanks to cyber-insurance.
(joint work with Jean Bolot SPRINT).

Host :