Epidemic spreading on scale-free networks with diversity of node anti-attack abilities

In this article, a modified susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model is proposed to study the influence of diversity of node anti-attack abilities on the threshold of propagation in scale-free networks. In particular, a vulnerability function related to node degree is introduced into the model to describe the diversity of a node anti-attack ability. Analytical results are derived using the mean-field theory and it is observed that the diversity of anti-attack of nodes in scale-free networks can increase effectively the threshold of epidemic propagation. The simulation results agree with the analytical results. The results show that the vulnerability functions can help adopt appropriate immunization strategies.