WSEAS Transactions on Mathematics
Print ISSN: 1109-2769, E-ISSN: 2224-2880
Volume 12, 2013
A Modified Measure of Covert Network Performance
Author:
Abstract: In a covert network the need for secrecy is at odds with the desire for easy transmission of information. Lindelauf et al. [7] have defined several measures that can be used to evaluate the total performance of a covert social network by using a product of individual measures of secrecy and of information transmission. As one of their simplest measures of secrecy, Lindelauf et al. use a modified version of the idea of neighbor connectivity. Using this measure, the optimal network structure is a star graph. In this paper we modify the Lindelauf measure of secrecy to include information about the connectedness (not just the order) of the survival subgraph using a measure based on ideas related to Chv´atal’s toughness parameter. We determine an upper bound on performance of trees and conjecture that a specific class of spider graphs achieves maximum performance. We also describe several opportunities for further research.