| In the past decade, the emerging discipline of Network Science has attracted a substantial amount of attention from physicists and computer scientists. The core objects that Network Science studies are complex networks, which are pervasive in the real world. The most important example of a real world complex network is the Internet. One important characteristic of complex networks is their resilience when exposed to various malicious attacks. While there have been previous studies of this topic, our understanding in this field is far from satisfactory. This thesis represents an extensive study of the resilience of complex networks against a spectrum of attacks, including recently introduced dependent attacks and sophisticated adaptive attacks. It advances the state of the art by making three contributions. First, it revisits the resilience of non-interdependent networks in the context of a spectrum of realistic attacks that are launched by a single attacker (or collaborating attackers). Second, it studies the resilience of interdependent networks against a spectrum of attacks. Third, it studies the resilience of non-interdependent networks against attacks that are launched by multiple non-collaborating attackers. The studies lead to findings and insights that are observed for the first time in this thesis. |
