On the Spread of Viruses on the Internet

We analyze the contact process on random graphs generated according to the preferential attachment scheme as a model for the spread of viruses in the Internet. We show that any virus with a positive rate of spread from a node to its neighbors has a non-vanishing chance of becoming epidemic. Quantitatively, we discover an interesting dichotomy: for it virus with effective spread rate λ, if the infection starts at a typical vertex, then it develops into an epidemic with probability λ^Θ ((log (1/ λ)/log log (1/ λ))), but on average the epidemic probability is λ^(Θ (1))

Analyzing the Virus Spread over Facebook Social Network using Descriptive Data Mining Techniques

Social networking currently has become one of the most popular forms ofcommunication among users on the Internet. Accordingly, with the exponential growth of users participating in the social networks and their exposure of sensitive personal information online has added additional value to the security breach issue.Namely, by curiously accessing various fraudulent links or applications that socialnet working sites offer to their users has provided a "Petri plate" for rapid spread of infectious viruses. To make things even more complicated, the friend-of-a-friend structure of these types of networks is correlated both with the speed of spreading,as well as the direction of spreading of the viruses. Therefore, this instigated the conduction of the survey on how viruses spread across the Facebook network, out of which some descriptive data mining statistics were gained and analyzed in the IBM's SPSS Statistics tool, along with a comparison of these results between the examined participating countries (Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo)

Home Computer Security Can Be Improved Using Online Video Streaming Services

Home computer users face many new computer security threats. The rise of the internet has enabled viruses to spread rapidly. Educating computer users on security issues is one way to combat security threats. Video streaming web sites can provide a simple way to distribute educational videos to computer users. This project investigates the effectiveness of creating and distributing computer security educational videos on video streaming sites

Towards the epidemiological modeling of computer viruses

Epidemic dynamics of computer viruses is an emerging discipline aiming to understand the way that computer viruses spread on networks. This paper is intended to establish a series of rational epidemic models of computer viruses. First, a close inspection of some common characteristics shared by all typical computer viruses clearly reveals the flaws of previous models. Then, a generic epidemic model of viruses, which is named as the SLBS model, is proposed. Finally, diverse generalizations of the SLBS model are suggested. We believe this work opens a door to the full understanding of how computer viruses prevail on the Internet

A Model of Virus Infection Dynamics in Mobile Personal Area Network

In this paper, the authors explore the mobile network security focused on the virus threat. Firstly, the authors explain the importance of mobile network security which sometimes not really takes into considerations by users. This paper then explains the virus threat of mobile devices virus where it explains how the viruses spread. The threats can be in three major forms namely the virus spreading via mobile personal area network, virus spreading via internet access and virus spreading via messaging. Lastly a model explains the dynamics of the infection on Mobile Network is introduced

Cyberethics: Identifying The Moral, Legal And Social Issues Of Cybertechnology In K-12 Classrooms

Two computer viruses that have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage over the past four years are the Melissa and the Sasser virus. In March of 1999, the Melissa virus first appeared on the Internet and spread rapidly throughout computer systems in the United States and Europe. The virus made its way through 1.2 million computers in the United States alone. On December 9, 1999, David Smith pleaded guilty to state and federal charges associated with his creation of the Melissa virus (Vamosi, 2003). Reasons for writing the viruses; “boredom”, “the challenge”, and “that’s what I’m good at, what I like to do. In May, 2004, the Sasser virus was released by an 18 year old in Germany (Williams, 2004). The arrest made on this “script kiddie” was the first which used Microsoft’s $5,000,000 fund, even though millions has been offered for information on other viruses. Unfortunately, young virus creators are unwilling to turn one another in, claiming they write viruses because they have nothing else to do or because they just want to see what happens. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, this paper will describe the extent of Internet/cyber use by American students. Second, this paper will present data from a resent research project showing the large amount of cyber crimes are secondary students are aware of and are participating in. Finally, this paper will present scenarios which might help the reader understand why ethical choices of today’s script kiddies are not as black and white as the reader might think

Holding Internet Service Providers Accountable

Internet service providers are today largely immune from liability for their role in the creation and propagation of worms, viruses, and other forms of malicious computer code. In this Essay, we question that state of affairs. Our purpose is not to weigh in on the details—for example, whether liability should sound in negligence or strict liability, or whether liability is in this instance best implemented by statute or via gradual common law development. Rather, our aim is to challenge the recent trend in the courts and Congress away from liability and toward complete immunity for Internet service providers. In our view, such immunity is difficult to defend on policy grounds, and sharply inconsistent with conventional tort law principles. Internet service providers control the gateway through which Internet pests enter and reenter the public computer system. They should therefore bear some responsibility for stopping these pests before they spread and for helping to identify individuals who originate malicious code in the first place