Modeling Malware Propagation in Networks of Smart Cell Phones with Spatial Dynamics

Abstract

Recent outbreaks of virus and worm attacks targeted at cell phones have have bought to the forefront the seriousness of the security threat to this increasingly popular means of communication. The ability of smart cell phones to communicate through both the Internet and the telecom networks along with the presence of a number of communication interfaces makes them vulnerable to attacks from a number of sources which can then propagate at extremely fast rates. In this paper we develop an analytic framework for modeling the dynamics of malware propagation in networks of smart phones that specifically accounts for the mobile nature of these devices. We also characterize the conditions under which the network may reach a malware free equilibrium and derive the necessary conditions for its global asymptotic stability. The model accounts for malware transfers through the Internet and peer to peer networks, through the telephone network and through Bluetooth and WLAN interfaces.