Modeling malware propagation in Gnutella type peer-to-peer networks

A key emerging and popular communication paradigm, primarily employed for information dissemination, is peer-to-peer (P2P) networking. In this paper, we model the spread of malware in decentralized, Gnutella type of peer-to-peer networks. Our study reveals that the existing bound on the spectral radius governing the possibility of an epidemic outbreak needs to be revised in the context of a P2P network. We formulate an analytical model that emulates the mechanics of a decentralized Gnutella type of peer network and study the spread of malware on such networks. We show analytically, that a framework which does not incorporate the behavioral characteristics of peers ends up over estimating the epidemic threshold metric, R0. This in turn results in false positives, an undesirable feature.We also characterize the conditions under which the network may reach a malware free equilibrium and validate our theoretical results with numerical simulations.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Krishna K. Ramachandran, Biplab Sikdar
• Keywords: Decentralized Gnutella Type, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Gnutella Type, IPPS 2006, Malware