Fast fragmentation of networks using module-based attacks

Abstract

In the multidisciplinary field of Network Science, optimization of procedures for efficiently breaking complex networks is attracting much attention from a practical point of view. In this contribution, we present a module-based method to efficiently fragment complex networks. The procedure firstly identifies topological communities through which the network can be represented using a well established heuristic algorithm of community finding. Then only the nodes that participate of inter-community links are removed in descending order of their betweenness centrality. We illustrate the method by applying it to a variety of examples in the social, infrastructure, and biological fields. It is shown that the module-based approach always outperforms targeted attacks to vertices based on node degree or betweenness centrality rankings, with gains in efficiency strongly related to the modularity of the network. Remarkably, in the US power grid case, by deleting 3% of the nodes, the proposed method breaks the original network in fragments which are twenty times smaller in size than the fragments left by betweenness-based attack.