Article:
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R.A. Brandmeier & F. Rupp (2009): Masking and Revealing Secrets:
Encryption, Competitive Intelligence and Spy Games, HOMO OECONOMICUS,
26 (1), pp. 7-21.


Abstract:
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Throughout the text we will take the point of view of an agent who,
most efficiently, tries to reveal a masked secret. Of course, first
we have to understand the countermeasures with which companies mask
or cipher a message. Hereby, we give some overview of encryption methods
which shows that this field advanced to such a high degree of perfection
such that it is impossible for all practical purposes to use deciphering
techniques against a sender. Thus, other methods to gather secret
in-formation need to be exploited; which – for our purpose – will be the
three major practices of today’s Competitive Intelligence units:
observation, human intelligence and electronic media surveys. I.e.,
instead of deciphering a secret, the modern agent tries to recover the
sources of the information and reconstruct the secret with all its
background data. Last, we consider the tactical aspects of our agent’s
behavior by means of a nontrivial example of a spy game on three arcs.
The optimal strategy in this case is to wait a random amount of time
and then reveal the secret as fast as possible.