Catcher-Evader Games

Abstract: Algorithms for computing game-theoretic solutions have recently been applied to a number of security domains. However, many of the techniques developed for compact representations of security games do not extend to {\em Bayesian} security games, which allow us to model uncertainty about the attacker's type. In this paper, we introduce a general framework of {\em catcher-evader} games that can capture Bayesian security games as well as other game families of interest. We show that computing Stackelberg strategies is NP-hard, but give an algorithm for computing a Nash equilibrium that performs well in experiments. We also prove that the Nash equilibria of these games satisfy the {\em interchangeability} property, so that equilibrium selection is not an issue.