An epidemiological model of virus spread and cleanup

Signature based anti-virus technologies are widely used to fight computer viruses. It is difficult to evaluate such systems because they work in the wild and few companies would be willing to turn them off to be part of a control group! This paper presents a new model of these technologies that can be used to predict and evaluate their effectiveness. The paper will demonstrate how the model can be used to understand the overall system dynamics, calculate expected costs of outbreaks, give insight into the relative importance of parts of the system and suggest ways to improve the technology. It is also used to evaluate new approaches to fighting viruses.

[1]  Roger A. Grimes,et al.  Malicious Mobile Code: Virus Protection for Windows , 2001 .

[2]  Jeffrey O. Kephart,et al.  Directed-graph epidemiological models of computer viruses , 1991, Proceedings. 1991 IEEE Computer Society Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy.

[3]  Donald F. Towsley,et al.  Code red worm propagation modeling and analysis , 2002, CCS '02.

[4]  M. Newman.  Spread of epidemic disease on networks. , 2002, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[5]  Alessandro Vespignani,et al.  Epidemic spreading in scale-free networks. , 2000, Physical review letters.

[6]  Andy Norman,et al.  Hitting back at Code Red , 2003 .

[7]  A. Barabasi,et al.  Halting viruses in scale-free networks. , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[8]  Matthew M. Williamson,et al.  Throttling viruses: restricting propagation to defeat malicious mobile code , 2002, 18th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, 2002. Proceedings..

[9]  S. Bornholdt,et al.  Scale-free topology of e-mail networks. , 2002, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[10]  N. Rashevsky,et al.  Mathematical biology , 1961, Connecticut medicine.

[11]  Matthew C. Elder,et al.  On computer viral infection and the effect of immunization , 2000, Proceedings 16th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC'00).

[12]  Albert,et al.  Emergence of scaling in random networks , 1999, Science.

[13]  Jasmin Leveille,et al.  Epidemic Spreading in Technological Networks , 2002 .

[14]  Michalis Faloutsos,et al.  On power-law relationships of the Internet topology , 1999, SIGCOMM '99.

[15]  Matthew M. Williamson,et al.  Implementing and Testing a Virus Throttle , 2003, USENIX Security Symposium.

[16]  Vern Paxson,et al.  How to Own the Internet in Your Spare Time , 2002, USENIX Security Symposium.

[17]  Alessandro Vespignani,et al.  Immunization of complex networks. , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[18]  Steve R. White,et al.  Computers and epidemiology , 1993, IEEE Spectrum.