Deceptive Labeling: Hypergames on Graphs for Stealthy Deception

• Published in: IEEE control systems letters 2021-07, Vol.5 (3), p.977-982
• Main Authors: Kulkarni, Abhishek N., Luo, Huan, Leslie, Nandi O., Kamhoua, Charles A., Fu, Jie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bayes methods; Computer security; deception; Formal methods; Game theory; Games; hypergame theory; Labeling; Safety; temporal logic
• ISSN: 2475-1456; 2475-1456
• DOI: 10.1109/LCSYS.2020.3008078

With the increasing sophistication of attacks on cyber-physical systems, deception has emerged as an effective tool to improve system security and safety by obfuscating the attacker's perception. In this letter, we present a solution to the deceptive game in which a control agent is to satisfy a Boolean objective specified by a co-safe temporal logic formula in the presence of an adversary. The agent intentionally introduces asymmetric information to create payoff misperception, which manifests as the misperception of the labeling function in the game model. Thus, the adversary is unable to accurately determine which logical formula is satisfied by a given outcome of the game. We introduce a model called hypergame on graph to capture the asymmetrical information with one-sided payoff misperception. Based on this model, we present the solution of such a hypergame and use the solution to synthesize stealthy deceptive strategies. Specifically, deceptive sure winning and deceptive almost-sure winning strategies are developed by reducing the hypergame to a two-player game and one-player stochastic game with reachability objectives. A running example is introduced to demonstrate the game model and the solution concept used for strategy synthesis.