Modeling the dynamics of worm propagation using two-dimensional cellular automata in smartphones

Abstract

Smartphones combine the communication capabilities of cellphones and the functions of PDA (personal digital assistant), which enable us to access a large variety of ubiquitous services, such as surfing the web, sending/receiving emails, MMS, and online shopping. However, the availability of these services provided by smartphones increases the vulnerability to worm attacks. In addition, modeling on worm propagation in smartphones is particularly challenging because it is difficult to piece together dynamics from pair-wise device interactions. To characterize the propagation dynamics of worms in smartphones, we propose an efficient worm propagation modeling scheme using a two-dimensional cellular automata based on the epidemic theory. A set of suitable local transition rules is designed for the two-dimensional cellular automata in this scheme. Moreover, this scheme integrates an infection factor to evaluate the spread degree of infected nodes, and a resistance factor to evaluate the degree that susceptible nodes resist. Five classes of epidemic states are considered: susceptible, exposed, infected, diagnosed, and recovered. We explore a strategy for simulating the dynamics of worm propagation process from a single node to the entire network. The effectiveness and rationality of the proposed model have been validated through extensive simulations.