Damage attack on complex networks

•Damage characterizes the vertex importance to maintain the integrity of a network.•In damage attack adversaries select the vertex causing the most damage to attack.•We systematically investigated a new attack model: damage attack.•Damage attack is more destructive than degree attack.

Behaviors of complex networks under intentional attacks guided by degree (degree attack) have been extensively studied. However, little is known about the behaviors of these networks under intentional attacks guided by damage (damage attack), in which adversaries choose the vertex with the largest damage to attack. In this article, we systematically investigate damage attack and behaviors of real networks as well as synthetic networks against damage attack. Empirical study shows that for real networks in a wide range of domains there exists a critical-point before which damage attack is more destructive than degree attack. This is further explained by the fact that degree attack tends to produce networks with more heterogeneous damage distribution than damage attack. Results in this article strongly suggest that damage attack is one of the most destructive attacks and deserves additional study. Our understanding about damage attack may also shed light on efficient solutions to protect real networks against damage attack.