$k$-core percolation on complex networks: Comparing random, localized and targeted attacks

The type of malicious attack inflicting on networks greatly influences their stability under ordinary percolation in which a node fails when it becomes disconnected from the giant component. Here we study its generalization, k-core percolation, in which a node fails when it loses connection to a threshold k number of neighbors. We study and compare analytically and by numerical simulations of k-core percolation the stability of networks under random attacks (RA), localized attacks (LA) and targeted attacks (TA), respectively. By mapping a network under LA or TA into an equivalent network under RA, we find that in both single and interdependent networks, TA exerts the greatest damage to the core structure of a network. We also find that for Erdős-Rényi (ER) networks, LA and RA exert equal damage to the core structure, whereas for scale-free (SF) networks, LA exerts much more damage than RA does to the core structure.