A SEARCHER VERSUS HIDER GAME WITH INCOMPLETE INFORMATION ABOUT SEARCH RESOURCES

We introduce a search game in which a hider has partial information about a searcher's resource. The hider can be a terrorist trying to hide and the searcher can be special forces trying to catch him. The terrorist does not know the number of forces involved in the search but just its distribution. We model this situation by a noncooperative game. In a related setup, which is motivated by wireless networks applications, the terrorist inserts a malicious node in a network, reducing network connectivity and thereby undermining its security. Meanwhile, the network operator applies appropriate measures to detect malicious nodes and maintain network performance. We investigate how the information about the total search resources that are available to the hider can influence the behavior of both players. For the case, where the distribution has two mass points, we prove that the game has a unique equilibrium and moreover, we describe explicitly this equilibrium, its structure and some other properties.