Malware "Ecology" Viewed as Ecological Succession: Historical Trends and Future Prospects
This provides a novel framework for understanding malware trends, potentially aiding cybersecurity researchers and practitioners in predicting future threats.
The paper models malware evolution as analogous to ecological succession, showing that environmental changes and feedback from competition and antivirus coevolution drive the development of diverse malware types with varying transmission modes and adaptability.
The development and evolution of malware including computer viruses, worms, and trojan horses, is shown to be closely analogous to the process of community succession long recognized in ecology. In particular, both changes in the overall environment by external disturbances, as well as, feedback effects from malware competition and antivirus coevolution have driven community succession and the development of different types of malware with varying modes of transmission and adaptability.