Secure message delivery games for device-to-device communications

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is expected to be a key feature supported by next generation cellular networks. D2D can extend the cellular coverage allowing users to communicate when telecommunications infrastructure are highly congested or absent. In D2D networks, any message delivery from a source to a destination relies exclusively on intermediate devices. Each device can run different kinds of mobile security software, which offer protection against viruses and other harmful programs by using real-time scanning in every file entering the device. In this paper, we investigate the best D2D network path to deliver a potentially malicious message from a source to a destination. Although our primary objective is to increase security, we also investigate the contribution of energy costs and quality-of-service to the path selection. To this end, we propose the Secure Message Delivery (SMD) protocol, whose main functionality is determined by the solution of the Secure Message Delivery Game (SMDG). This game is played between the defender (i.e., the D2D network) which abstracts all legitimate network devices and theattackerwhich abstracts any adversary that can inject different malicious messages into the D2D network in order, for instance, to infect a device with malware. Simulation results demonstrate the degree of improvement that SMD introduces as opposed to a shortest path routing protocol. This improvement has been measured in terms of the defender’s expected cost as defined in SMDGs. This cost includes security expected damages, energy consumption incurred due to messages inspection, and the quality-of-service of the D2D message communications.