Why Mobile-to-Mobile Wireless Malware Won't Cause a Storm

The enhanced capabilities of smartphones are creating the opportunity for new forms of malware to spread directly between mobile devices over short-range radio. This has been observed already in Bluetooth radios, and WiFi capabilities of smartphones provide an opportune new spreading vector. The increasing complexity of phone operating systems coupled with disclosed vulnerabilities suggest it is simply a matter of time before WiFi based worms are possible. Works that have considered this problem for Bluetooth suggest outbreaks would result in epidemics [11,28,32]. We use traditional epidemiological modeling tools and high-fidelity realistic human mobility data to study the spreading speed of this emergent threat. As opposed to other works, we take in to account the effects of exposure times, wireless propagation radii, and limited population susceptibility. Importantly, we find that lowering the susceptibility of the population to infection gives significant herd immunity as with biological infections, but unlike traditional Internet worms, making such threats unlikely in the near to medium term. Specifically, with susceptibility rates below 10% the result is near total immunity of the population. We find exposure times, and wireless transmission radii have no significant effect on outbreaks.

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