A rational framework for secure communication

In this paper, we review the classical secure communication issues, which is always described as a set of interactive rules following a specified sequence, in the perspective of game theory. By introducing rational communication participants, we model the secure communication process in the manner of game theory to capture the interactions of distrusted communication parties. More specifically, we propose a formal framework to provide a precise description of the computation and communication rules in a secure communication game. Each player tends to behave in a way that maximizes their profits in this framework. Following the framework, the fairness of a protocol is presented according to Nash equilibrium of the communication game, as well as the equivalence condition towards a fair protocol. To verify the effectiveness of this framework, we design and implement a series of experiments. The experimental results show that our rational framework is more secure and closer to the practice compared with traditional cryptographic models, which can be a promising analysis solution for future cryptographic protocols.