Comparison of cascading failures in small-world and scale-free networks subject to vertex and edge attacks

Complex networks may undergo a global cascade of overload failures when a single highly loaded vertex or edge is intentionally attacked. Here we use the recent load model of cascading failures to investigate the performance of the small-world (SW) and scale-free (SF) networks subject to deliberate attacks on vertex and edge. Simulation results suggest that compared with the SW network, the SF network is more vulnerable to deliberate vertex attacks and more robust to deliberate edge attacks. In the SF network, deliberate vertex attacks can result in larger cascading failures than deliberate edge attacks; however, in the SW network the situation is opposite. Furthermore, with the increase of the rewiring probability the SW network becomes more and more robust to deliberate vertex and edge attacks.