Assembly effect of groups in online social networks

Due to the popularity and growth of online social networks, security in these networks becomes a critical problem. Previous works have proved that a virus can spread effectively in social networks. In this paper, groups in social networks are studied. We notice that groups on social network services sites can assemble people with similar characteristics, which may promote virus propagation in these networks. After our analysis, it is found that the use of groups can shorten the distance among users, and hence it would cause faster virus spread. We propose a virus propagation model and simulate it in a group network to show the assembly effect of groups. Our result shows that even with only one random attack, a virus can still spread rapidly, and the direct contact among group members is the reason for fast spreading. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.