Critical Node Detection for Sequential Attacks in Complex Networks via Multi-objective Optimization

The critical node detection for sequential attacks based on cascading failure model is an important way for analyzing network vulnerability, which has attracted the attention of many researchers in the field of complex network recently. However, most of the existing cascading critical node detection algorithms focus on designing effective attack strategies leading to the maximal damage to the network (i.e. attack effect), while ignoring the cost of attacks. To this end, we transform the cascading critical node detection for sequential attacks as a bi-objective optimization problem (named BCVNDSeq), where the attack cost and the attack effect are simultaneously optimized. In order to solve the transformed problem, we propose a multiobjective cascading critical node detection algorithm (named MO-BCVNDSeq), which can provide decision makers with a holistic view for analyzing the network vulnerability. In MO-BCVNDSeq, a local search strategy based on sequential matrix is proposed to accelerate the population convergence and an individual repairing strategy is also suggested to further improve the search efficiency. Finally, the experimental results on 6 real-world complex networks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm compared with several representative baselines.