iShare: Blockchain-Based Privacy-Aware Multi-Agent Information Sharing Games for Cybersecurity

Abstract

In this paper, we design, develop, and evaluate a novel information sharing (iShare) framework for cybersecurity with the goal of protecting confidential information and networked infrastructures from future cyber-attacks. The proposed iShare framework leverages the Blockchain concept used in Bitcoin systems where multiple organizations/agencies participate for information sharing (without violating their privacy) to secure and monitor their cyberspace. Note that the Bitcoin for financial transactions has already demonstrated that there is a trusted, auditable sharing with peer-to-peer communications accompanied by a public ledger. The main aim of the Blockchain-based iShare framework is to constantly collect high-resolution, cyber-attack information across organizational boundaries of which the organizations have no specific knowledge or control over any other organizations' data or damage caused by cyber-attacks. In the proposed iShare framework, the decentralized nature of the Blockchain and digitally signed transactions ensure that an adversary cannot pose as a legitimate organization/user or cannot control/hamper the system because of the digital-signatures and cannot learn anything from the public ledger that has just hashed pointers. Moreover, we analyze the security attacks by outsiders (not participating in the iShare) using a Stackelberg game.