A Moment of Weakness: Protecting Against Targeted Attacks Following a Natural Disaster

Jorik Oostenbrink; Fernando Kuipers

doi:10.1145/3397776.3397780

A Moment of Weakness: Protecting Against Targeted Attacks Following a Natural Disaster

Jorik Oostenbrink, Fernando Kuipers

Embedded Systems

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Abstract

By targeting communication and power networks, malicious actors can significantly disrupt our society. As networks are more vulnerable after a natural disaster, this moment of weakness may be exploited to disrupt the network even further. However, the potential impact and mitigation of such a follow-up attack has yet to be studied.

In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze the impact of a combination of a natural disaster followed by a targeted single node failure. We apply this framework on empirical disaster data and two network topologies. Our experiments show that even small targeted attacks can significantly augment the already grave network disruption caused by a natural disaster. We further show that this effect can be mitigated by adopting a calculated repair strategy.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	12-15
Number of pages	4
Journal	ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review
Volume	47
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3397776.3397780
Publication status	Published - 2020
Event	CINS 2019: The third ACM SIGMETRICS International Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Network Security - Phoenix, United States Duration: 28 Jun 2019 → 28 Jun 2019 Conference number: 3rd

Bibliographical note

Special Issue on the third ACM SIGMETRICS International Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Network Security (CINS 2019)

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title = "A Moment of Weakness: Protecting Against Targeted Attacks Following a Natural Disaster",

abstract = " By targeting communication and power networks, malicious actors can significantly disrupt our society. As networks are more vulnerable after a natural disaster, this moment of weakness may be exploited to disrupt the network even further. However, the potential impact and mitigation of such a follow-up attack has yet to be studied.In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze the impact of a combination of a natural disaster followed by a targeted single node failure. We apply this framework on empirical disaster data and two network topologies. Our experiments show that even small targeted attacks can significantly augment the already grave network disruption caused by a natural disaster. We further show that this effect can be mitigated by adopting a calculated repair strategy.",

author = "Jorik Oostenbrink and Fernando Kuipers",

note = "Special Issue on the third ACM SIGMETRICS International Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Network Security (CINS 2019); CINS 2019 : The third ACM SIGMETRICS International Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Network Security ; Conference date: 28-06-2019 Through 28-06-2019",

year = "2020",

doi = "10.1145/3397776.3397780",

language = "English",

volume = "47",

pages = "12--15",

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T1 - A Moment of Weakness

T2 - CINS 2019

AU - Oostenbrink, Jorik

AU - Kuipers, Fernando

N1 - Conference code: 3rd

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - By targeting communication and power networks, malicious actors can significantly disrupt our society. As networks are more vulnerable after a natural disaster, this moment of weakness may be exploited to disrupt the network even further. However, the potential impact and mitigation of such a follow-up attack has yet to be studied.In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze the impact of a combination of a natural disaster followed by a targeted single node failure. We apply this framework on empirical disaster data and two network topologies. Our experiments show that even small targeted attacks can significantly augment the already grave network disruption caused by a natural disaster. We further show that this effect can be mitigated by adopting a calculated repair strategy.

AB - By targeting communication and power networks, malicious actors can significantly disrupt our society. As networks are more vulnerable after a natural disaster, this moment of weakness may be exploited to disrupt the network even further. However, the potential impact and mitigation of such a follow-up attack has yet to be studied.In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze the impact of a combination of a natural disaster followed by a targeted single node failure. We apply this framework on empirical disaster data and two network topologies. Our experiments show that even small targeted attacks can significantly augment the already grave network disruption caused by a natural disaster. We further show that this effect can be mitigated by adopting a calculated repair strategy.

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JF - ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review

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Y2 - 28 June 2019 through 28 June 2019

ER -

A Moment of Weakness: Protecting Against Targeted Attacks Following a Natural Disaster

Abstract

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The Risk of Successive Disasters: A Blow-by-Blow Network Vulnerability Analysis

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