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The spread of computer viruses under the influence of removable storage devices

journal contribution
posted on 2012-12-15, 00:00 authored by Luxing YangLuxing Yang, X Yang
Removable storage devices provide a way other than the Internet for the spread of computer viruses. However, nearly all previous epidemiological models of viruses considered only the Internet route of spread of viruses, neglecting the removable device route at all. In this paper, a new spread model of viruses, which incorporates the effect of removable devices, is suggested. Different from previous models, the epidemic threshold for this model vanishes. Moreover, the model admits a unique virose equilibrium, which is shown to be globally asymptotically stable. This result implies that any effort in eradicating viruses cannot succeed. By analyzing the respective influences of system parameters, a number of policies are recommended so as to restrict the density of infected computers to below an acceptable threshold.

History

Journal

Applied mathematics and computation

Volume

219

Issue

8

Pagination

3914 - 3922

Publisher

Elsevier

Location

Philadelphia, Pa.

ISSN

0096-3003

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2012, Elsevier