Abstract
Epidemic dynamics of computer viruses is an emerging discipline aiming to understand the way that computer viruses spread on networks. This paper is intended to establish a series of rational epidemic models of computer viruses. First, a close inspection of some common characteristics shared by all typical computer viruses clearly reveals the flaws of previous models. Then, a generic epidemic model of viruses, which is named as the SLBS model, is proposed. Finally, diverse generalizations of the SLBS model are suggested. We believe this work opens a door to the full understanding of how computer viruses prevail on the Internet.
Highlights
As a technical term coined by Cohen, a computer virus is a malicious program that can replicate itself and spread from computer to computer
Ii The strong desire to understand the spread mechanism of computer viruses has motivated the proposal of a variety of epidemic models that are based on fully connected networks, that is, networks where each computer is likely to be accessed by any other computer
Some previous epidemic models of computer viruses were established by borrowing biological epidemic models with E compartment, implying the prior assumption that some infected computers possess no infectivity 25, 29–31, 36–39
Summary
As a technical term coined by Cohen, a computer virus is a malicious program that can replicate itself and spread from computer to computer. I The finding that the autonomous system level topological structure of the Internet follows diverse power law distributions 6–8 has stimulated the interest in the spreading behavior of viruses on complex networks Previous work in this direction focused on the existence and estimation of the epidemic threshold under the SI model 9, 10 , the SIS model 11–21 , and the SIR model 19, 21–24 , leading to the most surprising finding that the epidemic threshold vanishes for scale-free networks with infinite size 11. Ii The strong desire to understand the spread mechanism of computer viruses has motivated the proposal of a variety of epidemic models that are based on fully connected networks, that is, networks where each computer is likely to be accessed by any other computer Previous work in this direction was focused mainly on the theoretical study of complex dynamical properties of the models, such as the global stability of equilibria, the emergence of periodic solutions, and the occurrence of chaotic phenomena 25–34.
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