MODELLING EPIDEMIC RESPONSE FOR MALWAREDEFENSE ON COMPUTER NETWORKS

Abstract

Security problems have emerged in computer networks since such systems entered the general public because of malicious individuals who take advantage of network vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to protected resources and also disrupt network services by using malicious software, otherwise referred to as malware. Malware attacks on organization networks could be fatal and costly since most malware could rapidly self-propagate and spread within a network like an infectious disease; causing a malware epidemic. The classical epidemic model has been used to study the propagation of and response to malware epidemics in computer networks. This study adapted the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible(SIS) epidemic model to design a defense response model for computer networks and analyse the model obtained using a game theoretic approach of the attacker and defender. The SIS epidemic model presented divided a network of fixed population into two compartments modelled with an ordinary differential equation that incorporated the strategies of the attacker and defender. Differential games were formulated and solved based on this model to derive the optimal response to malware epidemics. Numerical simulations carried out on the derived model show a fast response in containing malware contagion.Using C# and MATLAB,a user-friendly software called SIS Plotter was implemented for SIS simulations. The SIS epidemic model established could aid optimal decisions for malware defense on computer networks