Market for software vulnerabilities? Think again

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kannan, K; Telang, R
• 署名单位: Purdue University System; Purdue University; Carnegie Mellon University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1040.0357
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 726-740
• 关键词: information security; software vulnerabilities; vulnerability disclosure; game theory; public policy

摘要

Software vulnerability disclosure has become a critical area of concern for policyrnakers. Traditionally, a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) acts as an infomediary between benign identifiers (who voluntarily report vulnerability information) and software users. After verifying a reported vulnerability CERT sends out a public advisory so that users can safeguard their systems against potential exploits. Lately, firms such as Defense have been implementing a new market-based approach for vulnerability information. The market-based infomediary provides monetary rewards to identifiers for each vulnerability reported. The infomediary then shares this information with its client base. Using this information, clients protect themselves against potential attacks that exploit those specific vulnerabilities. The key question addressed in our paper is whether movement toward such a market-based mechanism for vulnerability disclosure leads to a better social outcome. Our analysis demonstrates that an active unregulated market-based mechanism for vulnerabilities almost always underperforms a passive CERT-type mechanism. This counterintuitive result is attributed to the market-based infomediary's incentive to leak the vulnerability information inappropriately. If a profit-maximizing firm is not allowed to (or chooses not to) leak vulnerability information, we find that social welfare improves. Even a regulated market-based mechanism performs better than a CERT-type one, but only under certain conditions. Finally, we extend our analysis and show that a proposed mechanism-federally funded social planner-always performs better than a market-based mechanism.