Modeling the Propagation of Worms in Networks: A Survey

There are the two common means for propagating worms: scanning vulnerable computers in the network and spreading through topological neighbors. Modeling the propagation of worms can help us understand how worms spread and devise effective defense strategies. However, most previous researches either focus on their proposed work or pay attention to exploring detection and defense system. Few of them gives a comprehensive analysis in modeling the propagation of worms which is helpful for developing defense mechanism against worms' spreading. This paper presents a survey and comparison of worms' propagation models according to two different spreading methods of worms. We first identify worms characteristics through their spreading behavior, and then classify various target discover techniques employed by them. Furthermore, we investigate different topologies for modeling the spreading of worms, analyze various worms' propagation models and emphasize the performance of each model. Based on the analysis of worms' spreading and the existing research, an open filed and future direction with modeling the propagation of worms is provided.