Gaming out Cyber-Attacks

Context: Applying game theory in cyber-attacks will help to prevent a cyberwar, as the game theory helped to prevent the escalation of nuclear war.

Game Theory

• Game theory is the science of strategy.
• It is the study of rational behavior in situations involving
• Interdependence means that any player is affected by what others do and his actions must depend on the prediction of others responses.

Significance of Game Theory in neutralising the Cold War and Nuclearisation:

• Identified problems by developing gaming scenarios of attack, escalation, and retaliation.
  • Potential for accidental launch: E.g. during the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a chance of launching nuclear weapon by accident or in error after mistakenly assuming the adversary had launched.
  • Lack of credible defence against nuclear strikes: nuclear strikes guarantee huge loss of life and utter physical destruction.
  • Potential for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): if both sides possessed three-strike capability.
• Benefits:
  • Can prevent a war: because a shoot-out is less likely if both parties know the other is capable of massive retaliation.
  • E.g. the hotline between the Kremlin and the White House, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were safeguards against an accidental World War.

Factors that make cyber-attacks dangerous:

• Cyber-arsenal can be built by anyone at cheap rates: Anyone who fiddles with code, or takes apart off-the-shelf hardware can craft cyber-exploits.
• Difficult to find perpetrators of a well-obfuscated cyber-attack.
• Usage of cybercrime as a revenue-stream: E.g. North Korea.
• Potential to destroy infrastructure: E.g. Ukraine had its power systems shut down, the British National Health Service was hit, and Critical data has been deleted from government servers in the Ukraine, and Georgia.
• No fool-proof defences is available: it is impossible to harden everything in a highly connected society

Way forward: Apply game theory in cyber-attacks.

• Concentrate on building an offensive cyber-arsenal.
• To develop game scenarios of cyber-attacks, escalation, and retaliation.
• To build the equivalent of second-strike, and third-strike cyber-capability
• To convince potential adversaries that they have credible ability to retaliate.