Related papers: Should the Ransomware be Paid?

Ransomware constitutes a significant threat to the Android operating system. It can either lock or encrypt the target devices, and victims are forced to pay ransoms to restore their data. Hence, the prompt detection of such attacks has a…

Ransomware represents a pervasive threat, traditionally countered at the operating system, file-system, or network levels. However, these approaches often introduce significant overhead and remain susceptible to circumvention by attackers.…

We propose a game-theoretic framework to study the outcomes of packetized payments, a cross-ledger transaction protocol, with strategic and possibly malicious agents. We derive the transaction failure rate and demonstrate that without…

Fraud is ubiquitous across applications and involve users bypassing the rule of law, often with the strategic aim of obtaining some benefit that would otherwise be unattainable within the bounds of lawful conduct. However, user fraud can be…

Bitcoin uses blockchain technology to maintain transactions order and provides probabilistic guarantee to prevent double-spending, assuming that an attacker's computational power does not exceed %50 of the network power. In this paper, we…

Ransomware attacks have caused billions of dollars in damages in recent years, and are expected to cause billions more in the future. Consequently, significant effort has been devoted to ransomware detection and mitigation. Behavioral-based…

Vicious assaults, malware, and various ransomware pose a cybersecurity threat, causing considerable damage to computer structures, servers, and mobile and web apps across various industries and businesses. These safety concerns are…

This paper focuses on botnet economics and design of defensive strategies. It takes the view that by combining scarce information on the attackers business models, with rational economic analysis of these business processes, one can…

In PCNs, nodes that forward payments between a source and a receiver are paid a small fee if the payment is successful. The fee is a compensation for temporarily committing funds to the payment. However, payments may fail due to…

This paper introduces a structural game-theoretic model to value decentralized digital assets like Bitcoin. Instead of relying on speculative beliefs, it frames the asset's price within a Rational-Expectations Security-Utility Nash…

Suppose a Bayesian agent seeks to traverse a graph. Each time she crosses an edge, she pays a price. The first time she reaches a node, there is a payoff. She has an opponent who can reduce the payoffs. This paper uses adversarial risk…

Recent statistics show that in 2015 more than 140 millions new malware samples have been found. Among these, a large portion is due to ransomware, the class of malware whose specific goal is to render the victim's system unusable, in…

We introduce a "high probability" framework for repeated games with incomplete information. In our non-equilibrium setting, players aim to guarantee a certain payoff with high probability, rather than in expected value. We provide a high…

Malicious softwares or malwares for short have become a major security threat. While originating in criminal behavior, their impact are also influenced by the decisions of legitimate end users. Getting agents in the Internet, and in…

I study repeated communication games between a patient sender and a sequence of receivers. The sender has persistent private information about his psychological cost of lying, and in every period, can privately observe the realization of an…

In this paper we consider a scenario where there are several algorithms for solving a given problem. Each algorithm is associated with a probability of success and a cost, and there is also a penalty for failing to solve the problem. The…

In this paper, we consider a new network security game wherein an attacker and a defender are battling over "multiple" targets. This type of game is appropriate to model many current network security conflicts such as Internet phishing,…

We argue that Large language models (LLMs) will soon alter the economics of cyberattacks. Instead of attacking the most commonly used software and monetizing exploits by targeting the lowest common denominator among victims, LLMs enable…

The rapid evolution of encryption-based threats has rendered conventional detection mechanisms increasingly ineffective against sophisticated attack strategies. Monitoring entropy variations across hierarchical system levels offers an…

Ransomware can produce direct and controllable economic loss, which makes it one of the most prominent threats in cyber security. As per the latest statistics, more than half of malwares reported in Q1 of 2017 are ransomwares and there is a…