An Initial Study of Targeted Personality Models in the FlipIt Game

Anjon Basak, Jakub Cerný, Marcus Gutierrez, Shelby R. Curtis, Charles A. Kamhoua, Daniel Jones, Branislav Bosanský, Christopher Kiekintveld

Abstract: Game theory typically assumes rational behavior for solution concepts such as Nash equilibrium. However, this assumption is often violated when human agents are interacting in real-world scenarios, such as cybersecurity. There are different human factors that drive human decision making, and these also vary significantly across individuals leading to substantial individual differences in behavior. Predicting these differences in behavior can help a defender to predict actions of different attacker types to provide better defender strategy tailored towards different attacker types. We conducted an initial study of this idea using a behavioral version of the FlipIt game. We show that there are identifiable differences in behavior among different groups (e.g., individuals with different Dark Triad personality scores), but our initial attempts at capturing these differences using simple known behavioral models does not lead to significantly improved defender strategies. This suggests that richer behavioral models are needed to effectively predict and target strategies in these more complex cybersecurity game.