Vulnerability analysis of urban road traffic network under cyber attacks on ride-hailing platforms

In the context of the information age, ride-hailing platforms have become an essential part of the urban transportation infrastructure system, greatly facilitating the travel needs of city residents. However, with the widespread application of ride-hailing platforms, network security issues have also become increasingly prominent, especially the malicious dispatching behavior that may have a serious negative impact on urban road traffic networks. In order to quantify the vulnerability of urban road traffic networks to malicious dispatching, this paper first designs a malicious vehicle dispatching scheme aimed at maximizing benefits based on graph theory methods, and simulates the attack effects by constructing a real-time traffic congestion model. Secondly, the vulnerability of the urban traffic network is measured by the connectivity between clusters within the city. Taking Nanjing as an example, this paper empirically analyzes the vulnerability of the road network in the central area during the morning peak period when subjected to a malicious dispatching attack by ride-hailing platforms. The results show that this type of attack can significantly reduce the road traffic capacity in some key directions, with only a few tens of vehicles dispatched. Moreover, there are significant differences in vulnerability in different directions. In response, we further identify the main factors causing these changes, aiming to provide a theoretical basis for improving the resilience of urban road networks in the information age.