An analytical model on the propagation of modern email worms

Email worms propagate across networks by taking advantage of email relationships. Modeling the propagation of email worms can help predict their potential damages and develop countermeasures. We propose a novel analytical model on the propagation process of modern reinfection email worms. It relies on probabilistic analysis, and thus can provide a steady and reliable assessment on the propagation dynamics. Additionally, by introducing virtual users to represent the repetitious spreading process, the proposed model overcomes the computational challenge caused by reinfection processes. To demonstrate the benefits of our model, we conduct a series of experimental evaluation. The results show that our novel approach achieves a greater accuracy and is more suitable for modeling modern email worms than previous models.