4. Restrain Malicious Attack Propagation

Restraining the propagation of malicious attacks in complex networks has long been an important but difficult problem to be addressed. In this chapter, we particularly use rumor propagation as an example to analyze the methods of restraining malicious attack propagation. There are mainly two types of methods: (1) blocking rumors at the most influential users or community bridges, and (2) spreading truths to clarify the rumors. We first compare all the measures of locating influential users. The results suggest that the degree and betweenness measures outperform all the others in real-world networks. Secondly, we analyze the method of the truth clarification method, and find that this method has a long-term performance while the degree measure performs well only in the early stage. Thirdly, in order to leverage these two methods, we further explore the strategy of different methods working together and their equivalence. Given a fixed budget in the real world, our analysis provides a potential solution to find out a better strategy by integrating both kinds of methods together.