Malware Propagation in Large-Scale Networks Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2014 IEEE. Malware is pervasive in networks, and poses a critical threat to network security. However, we have very limited understanding of malware behavior in networks to date. In this paper, we investigate how malware propagates in networks from a global perspective. We formulate the problem, and establish a rigorous two layer epidemic model for malware propagation from network to network. Based on the proposed model, our analysis indicates that the distribution of a given malware follows exponential distribution, power law distribution with a short exponential tail, and power law distribution at its early, late and final stages, respectively. Extensive experiments have been performed through two real-world global scale malware data sets, and the results confirm our theoretical findings.

published proceedings

  • IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON KNOWLEDGE AND DATA ENGINEERING

author list (cited authors)

  • Yu, S., Gu, G., Barnawi, A., Guo, S., & Stojmenovic, I.

citation count

  • 95

complete list of authors

  • Yu, Shui||Gu, Guofei||Barnawi, Ahmed||Guo, Song||Stojmenovic, Ivan

publication date

  • January 2015