1 research outputs found
Coping with Physical Attacks on Random Network Structures
Communication networks are vulnerable to natural disasters, such as
earthquakes or floods, as well as to physical attacks, such as an
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. Such real-world events happen at specific
geographical locations and disrupt specific parts of the network. Therefore,
the geographical layout of the network determines the impact of such events on
the network's physical topology in terms of capacity, connectivity, and flow.
Recent works focused on assessing the vulnerability of a deterministic
network to such events. In this work, we focus on assessing the vulnerability
of (geographical) random networks to such disasters. We consider stochastic
graph models in which nodes and links are probabilistically distributed on a
plane, and model the disaster event as a circular cut that destroys any node or
link within or intersecting the circle.
We develop algorithms for assessing the damage of both targeted and
non-targeted (random) attacks and determining which attack locations have the
expected most disruptive impact on the network. Then, we provide experimental
results for assessing the impact of circular disasters to communications
networks in the USA, where the network's geographical layout was modeled
probabilistically, relying on demographic information only. Our results
demonstrates the applicability of our algorithms to real-world scenarios.
Our algorithms allows to examine how valuable is public information about the
network's geographical area (e.g., demography, topography, economy) to an
attacker's destruction assessment capabilities in the case the network's
physical topology is hidden or examine the affect of hiding the actual physical
location of the fibers on the attack strategy. Thereby, our schemes can be used
as a tool for policy makers and engineers to design more robust networks and
identifying locations which require additional protection efforts