Evolutionary Game-Based Defense Mechanism in the MANETs

Providing a long term security of a computer system requires an efficient management of the resources consumption. This is particularly true for the Mobile Adhoc NETworks (MANETs) where nodes are characterized by limited resources. In this paper, we propose a game theoretic framework to predict malicious behaviors within a MANET and to analyze the best security alternatives that preserve the resources consumption of network entities. We model the interactions between an attacker and a defender evolving in the same environment as an evolutionary game. In these games, each entity can learn about the behavior of its opponent over time allowing the adjustment of its strategy. The main results of our game model are the elaboration of the Evolutionary Stable Strategies (ESSs) which is a stronger concept of equilibria and the illustration of the evolution process, based on the replicator dynamic. Numerical experiments verify the correctness of our theoretical analysis and show the feasibility and effectiveness of our model.