Preventing Malware Pandemics in Mobile Devices by Establishing Response-time Bounds
This addresses the problem of malware containment in mobile networks for cybersecurity, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing propagation and mobility models.
The paper tackles the problem of malware spreading in mobile device networks by establishing response-time bounds for counter-measures to prevent pandemics, with experimental results showing that specific time intervals can guarantee not all susceptible devices get infected.
We study the propagation of a malicious software in a network of mobile devices, which are moving in a specific city area, and establish time bounds for the activation of a counter-measure, i.e., an antivirus or a cleaner in order to prevent pandemic. More precisely, given an initial infected population (mobile devices), we establish upper bounds on the time needed for a counter-measure to take effect after infection (response-time), in order to prevent the rest susceptible devices to get infected. Thus, within a period of time, we guarantee that not all the susceptible devices in the city get infected and the infected ones get sanitized. In our work, we first propose a malware propagation model along with a device mobility model and then, utilizing these models, we develop a simulator that we use to study the spread of malware in such networks. Finally, we provide experimental results for the pandemic prevention taken by our simulator for various response-time intervals.