NetAttack: Co-Evolution of Network and Attacker

Interactions between individuals or organizations, and the changes and evolutions that result, are a central theme of complexity research. NetAttack aims at modeling a network environment where an attacker and a defender compete to disrupt a network or keep it connected. The choices of how to attack and defend the network are governed by a Genetic Algorithms (GA) which is used to choose among a set of available strategies. Our analysis shows that the choice of strategy is particularly important if the resources available to attacker and defender are similar. In such a situation, the defender and attacker genomes co-evolve and find an equilibrium. The best strategies found through GAs by the attackers and defenders are based on betweenness centrality. Our results agree with previous literature assessing strategies for network attack and defense in a static context. However, our paper is the first to show how a GA approach can be applied in a dynamic game on a network. This research provides a starting-point to further explore strategies and to optimize network disruption and reconstruction. Many applications for our kind of analysis may be found in the field of security and safety dealing with social (criminal networks) and technological (computer networks) contexts. ∗email: [email protected] †email: [email protected] ‡email: [email protected] §email: [email protected] ¶email: [email protected]