{"ID":2866715,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20329","arxiv_id":"2509.20329","title":"A Novel Framework for Honey-X Deception in Zero-Sum Games","abstract":"In this paper, we present a novel, game-theoretic model of deception in two-player, zero-sum games. Our framework leverages an information asymmetry: one player (the deceiver) has access to accurate payoff information, while the other (the victim) observes a modified version of these payoffs due to the deception strategy employed. The deceiver's objective is to choose a deception-action pair that optimally exploits the victim's best response to the altered payoffs, subject to a constraint on the deception's magnitude. We characterize the optimal deceptive strategy as the solution to a bi-level optimization problem, and we provide both an exact solution and an efficient method for computing a high-quality feasible point. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on numerical examples inspired by honeypot deception.","short_abstract":"In this paper, we present a novel, game-theoretic model of deception in two-player, zero-sum games. Our framework leverages an information asymmetry: one player (the deceiver) has access to accurate payoff information, while the other (the victim) observes a modified version of these payoffs due to the deception strate...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20329","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20329v1","authors":"[\"Brendan Gould\",\"Kyriakos Vamvoudakis\"]","published":"2025-09-24T17:17:29Z","proceeding":"cs.GT","tasks":"[\"cs.GT\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}