Robust Distributed Averaging in Networks

Abstract

In this work, we consider two types of adversarial attacks on a network of nodes seeking to reach consensus. The first type involves an adversary that is capable of breaking a specific number of links at each time instant. In the second attack, the adversary is capable of corrupting the values of the nodes by adding a noise signal. In this latter case, we assume that the adversary is constrained by a power budget. We consider the optimization problem of the adversary and fully characterize its optimum strategy for each scenario.

This is an elaborated version of our paper: "Consensus in the presence of an adversary," in Proceedings of the 3rd IFAC Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems (NecSys), 2012