Hacking the Colony: On the Disruptive Effect of Misleading Pheromone and How to Defend Against It

Abstract: Ants have evolved to seek and retrieve food by leaving trails of pheromones. This mechanism has inspired several approaches to decentralized multi-robot coordination. However, in this paper, we show that pheromone trails are a fragile mechanism for coordination, and can be sabotaged to starve the colony. We introduce detractors: malicious agents that leave a misleading, but indistinguishable, trail of food pheromone to distract and trap cooperator ants in the nest. We analyze the effectiveness of detractors with respect to parameters such as evaporation rate of misleading pheromone and fraction of detractors in the colony. In addition, we propose a countermeasure to this attack by introducing a new type of pheromone: the cautionary pheromone. Cooperator ants secrete this type of pheromone atop existing food trails as a warning. When the cautionary pheromone intensity exceeds the food pheromone intensity, cooperator ants ignore overlapping food pheromone. We show that, despite its simplicity, this defense mechanism can limit, but not nullify, the effect of detractors. Ultimately, our work shows that pheromone-based coordination, while effective, is also fragile.