Intentional Attack and Fusion-Based Defense Strategy in Complex Networks

Intentional attack incurs fatal threats on modern networks by paralyzing a small fraction of nodes with highest degrees to disrupt the network. To enhance the network robustness, in this paper we propose a fusion-based defense mechanism where each node performs local detection and feedbacks minimum (one-bit) information to the fusion center in order to infer the presence of attack. By formulating the attack and defense strategy as a zero-sum game, we leverage the expected payoff as a benchmark to evaluate the effectiveness of the fusion-based defense mechanism. Both analytic results and empirical data support that fusion-based defense is able to prevent the network from disruption, even under poor detection capability and fragile nature of complex networks.