ABSTRACT
An important technique in the area of cybersecurity can be in the application of what we know as game theory.
For the purposes of this course, we will develop just an introductory exposition to game theory, notably what is now referred to as “two-person, zero-sum games.” The term zero-sum refers to the constraint that whatever one party gains in such a game, his or her opponent loses. Perhaps the simplest example of such a two-person zero-sum game involves the toss of a coin. The sides of the coin are labeled heads or tails, and one player tosses while the other guesses the outcome of the toss. Let us call the players Mary and Norman and the results of the toss either H or T. Mary tosses the coin, and while it is in the air, Norman guesses the outcome. Clearly, there are four potential results in this game. In two-person game theory, we describe such a game by a matrix, with the rows of the matrix representing the choices for the first player and the columns the choices for the second. In this game, there are only two choices for each player, so we establish a 2 × 2 matrix.
