A New Framework for Network Disruption

Abstract: Traditional network disruption approaches focus on disconnecting or lengthening paths in the network. We present a new framework for network disruption that attempts to reroute flow through critical vertices via vertex deletion, under the assumption that this will render those vertices vulnerable to future attacks. We define the load on a critical vertex to be the number of paths in the network that must flow through the vertex. We present graph-theoretic and computational techniques to maximize this load, firstly by removing either a single vertex from the network, secondly by removing a subset of vertices.