dc.contributor.author Navin, Rustagi dc.date.accessioned 2010-09-09T21:49:43Z dc.date.available 2010-09-09T21:49:43Z dc.date.issued 2010-09-09 dc.date.submitted July 2010 dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1928/11118 dc.description.abstract Attacks on the Internet are characterized by several alarming trends: en_US 1) increases in frequency; 2) increases in speed; and 3) increases in severity. Modern computer worms simply propagate too quickly for human detection. Since attacks are now occurring at a speed which prevents direct human intervention, there is a need to develop automated defenses. Since the financial, social and political stakes are so high, we need defenses which are provably good against worst case attacks and are not too costly to deploy. In this dissertation we present two approaches to tackle these problems. For the first part of the dissertation we consider a game between an alert and a worm over a large network. We show, for this game, that it is possible to design an algorithm for the alerts that can prevent any worm from infecting more than a vanishingly small fraction of the nodes with high probability. Critical to our result is designing a communication network for spreading the alerts that has high expansion. The expansion of the network is related to the gap between the 1st and 2nd eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix. Intuitively high expansion ensures redundant connectivity. We also present results simulating our algorithm on networks of size up to $2^{25}$. In the second part of this dissertation we consider the virus inoculation game which models the selfish behavior of the nodes involved. We present a technique for this game which makes it possible to achieve the "windfall of malice" even without the actual presence of malicious players. We also show the limitations of this technique for congestion games that are known to have a windfall of malice. dc.description.sponsorship UNM Research grants en_US dc.language.iso en_US en_US dc.subject Worms en_US dc.subject Self certifying Alerts en_US dc.subject Overlay Network en_US dc.subject expander graphs en_US dc.subject mediators en_US dc.subject game theory en_US dc.subject.lcsh Internet games--Security measures. dc.subject.lcsh Multimedia communication--Security measures. dc.subject.lcsh Internet--Security measures--Automation. dc.subject.lcsh Computer viruses--Prevention. dc.title Security in network games en_US dc.type Dissertation en_US dc.description.degree Computer Science en_US dc.description.level Doctoral en_US dc.description.department University of New Mexico. Dept. of Computer Science en_US dc.description.advisor Saia, Jared dc.description.committee-member Aspnes, James dc.description.committee-member Diaz, Josep dc.description.committee-member Hayes, Thomas
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