Provable Security of Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a network security model that ensures provable security against small-scale attacks, while maintaining key properties like power law distribution, small-world characteristics, and efficient navigation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel security model for networks that guarantees provable security against small attacks and exhibits realistic topological features such as power law and small-world properties.

Findings

Networks from the model are secure against small-scale cascading failures.

Constructed networks follow a power law distribution and have small diameter.

Networks exhibit community structure and efficient navigability.

Abstract

We propose a definition of {\it security} and a definition of {\it robustness} of networks against the cascading failure models of deliberate attacks and random errors respectively, and investigate the principles of the security and robustness of networks. We propose a {\it security model} such that networks constructed by the model are provably secure against any attacks of small sizes under the cascading failure models, and simultaneously follow a power law, and have the small world property with a navigating algorithm of time complex $O(\log n)$. It is shown that for any network $G$ constructed from the security model, $G$ satisfies some remarkable topological properties, including: (i) the {\it small community phenomenon}, that is, $G$ is rich in communities of the form $X$ of size poly logarithmic in $\log n$ with conductance bounded by $O(\frac{1}{|X|^{\beta}})$ for some constant $\beta$, (ii) small diameter property, with diameter $O(\log n)$ allowing a navigation by a $O(\log n)$ time algorithm to find a path for arbitrarily given two nodes, and (iii) power law distribution, and satisfies some probabilistic and combinatorial principles, including the {\it degree priority theorem}, and {\it infection-inclusion theorem}. By using these principles, we show that a network $G$ constructed from the security model is secure for any attacks of small scales under both the uniform threshold and random threshold cascading failure models. Our security theorems show that networks constructed from the security model are provably secure against any attacks of small sizes, for which natural selections of {\it homophyly, randomness} and {\it preferential attachment} are the underlying mechanisms.