DCL Special Seminar: Prof. Mohammad Hossein Manshaei

Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor: Decision and Control Laboratory, Coordinated Science Laboratory
Location: 301 Coordinated Science Laboratory
Date: August 18, 2016 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Speaker: Prof. Mohammad Hossein Manshaei, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
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Contact: Angie Ellis
Email: amellis@illinois.edu
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To Trust or Not: Signaling Game Applications in Network Security

Mohammad Hossein Manshaei Isfahan University of Technology, Iran

Date, time, venue: Thursday, August 18, 2016; 3:00 – 4:00 pm; 301 CSL

Abstract:
Signaling game refers to a class of two-?player dynamic games in which one player (called the Sender) has private information (i.e., its type) while the other player (called the Receiver) has a common knowledge about the distribution of the type of the sender. The sender’s strategy set consists of sending messages depending on its type, while the receiver’s strategy set consists of actions contingent on the sender's choices. In this presentation, we first provide a novel approach to analyze signaling games. We show how we can derive all possible Perfect Bayesian Nash Equilibria (PBNE) of a signaling game in pure and mixed strategies. Then we address the question of how to apply signaling game framework to analyze network security problems.

In a first scenario, we investigate the interactions between a service provider and a client, where the client does not have complete information about the security conditions of the service provider. By taking into account potential attacks to the service provider, we develop an extended signaling game model, where the prior probability of the signaling game is determined by the outcome of a normal form game between an attacker and the service provider as a defender.

In a second scenario, we formulate a deception game in which the defender deploys a fake avatar in the social network for identification of the compromised internal user. We utilize the framework of signaling games to study the strategy of the deployed fake avatar when she interacts with external users. Our analysis determines for what probability of the external user being an attacker, the defender should launch a defending mechanism. We also briefly discuss signaling game applications in Remote Operating System Fingerprinting Attack and Moving Target Defense.

Bio: Mohammad Hossein Manshaei received the BSc degree in electrical engineering and the MSc degree in communication engineering from the Isfahan University of Technology in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He received another MSc degree in computer science and the PhD degree in computer science and distributed systems from the University of Nice Sophia-?Antipolis, France, in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He did his thesis work at INRIA, Sophia-?Antipolis, France. He is currently an assistant professor at the Isfahan University of Technology, Iran. From 2006 to 2011, he was a senior researcher and lecturer at EPFL, Switzerland. He held visiting positions at the UNCC, the NYU, and the VTech. His research interests include wireless networking, wireless security and privacy, computational biology, and game theory.