A computer virus spreading model based on resource limitations and interaction costs
Computer viruses are major threats to Internet security and privacy, therefore many researchers are addressing questions linked to virus propagation properties, spreading models, epidemic dynamics, tipping points, and control strategies. We believe that two important factors – resource limitations and costs – are being overlooked in this area due to an overemphasis on power-law connectivity distributions of scale-free networks affecting computer virus epidemic dynamics and tipping points. The study show (a) a significant epidemic tipping point does exists when resource limitations and costs are considered, with the tipping point exhibiting a lower bound; (b) when interaction costs increase or usable resources decrease, epidemic tipping points in scale-free networks grow linearly while density curves decrease linearly; (c) regardless of whether Internet user resources obey delta, uniform, or normal distributions, they retain the same epidemic dynamics and tipping points as long as the average value of those resources remains unchanged across different scale-free networks; (d) it is possible to control the spread of a computer virus in a scale-free network if resources are restricted and if costs associated with infection events are significantly increased through the use of a throttling strategy. The proposed model shows how resource and costs influence the epidemic dynamics of computer viruses in scale-free networks. A significant tipping point does exists on the epidemic dynamics of computer viruses when resource and costs are considered. It is possible to control the spread of a computer virus if resources are restricted and if costs significantly increased.
Related Content
A systematic review of the psychological literature on interruption and its patient safety implications
To understand the complex effects of interruption in healthcare. As interruptions have been well studied in other domains, the authors undertook a systematic review of experimental studies in psychology and human–computer interaction to identify the task types and variables influencing inte...


Action Recognition via Bio–Inspired Features: The Richness of Center-Surround Interaction
Motion is a key feature for a wide class of computer vision approaches to recognize actions. To go beyond the classical models and following the observations from xiao et al.(1997), we propose here to model different surround geometries for MT cells receptive fields. Then, we define the so-called...
Action recognition via bio-inspired features: The richness of center–surround interaction
Motion is a key feature for a wide class of computer vision approaches to recognize actions. In this article, we show how to define bio-inspired features for action recognition. To do so, we start from a well-established bio-inspired motion model of cortical areas V1 and MT. The primary visual co...
Ancilla-driven quantum computation with twisted graph states
We introduce a new paradigm for quantum computing called Ancilla-Driven Quantum Computation (ADQC) which combines aspects of the quantum circuit (Deutsch, 1989 [1]) and the one-way model (Raussendorf and Briegel, 21 [2]) to overcome some of the challenging issues in building large-scale quant...
A blendshape model that incorporates physical interaction
The linear blendshape technique has been intensively used for computer animation and games because of its simplicity and effectiveness. However, it cannot describe rotational deformations and deformations because of self collision or scene interaction. In this paper, we present a new technique to...


Stackelberg game to derive the limits of energy saving for the allocation of data center resources
Energy related costs are becoming one of the largest contributors to the overall cost of operating a data center, whereas the degree of data center utilization continues to be very low. An energy-aware dynamic provision of resources based on the consolidation of existing application instances can...
Carlisle 25 urban flood event simulation using cellular automata-based rapid flood spreading model
In this study, we propose a new method to apply the rapid flood spreading model (RFSM) using cellular automata (CA) to multiple inflows of Carlisle, UK. The purpose of the RFSM is to generate predictions of water depth and flood extent using less computer resource than required by two-dimensional...
FlipIt: The Game of “Stealthy Takeover
Recent targeted attacks have increased significantly in sophistication, undermining the fundamental assumptions on which most cryptographic primitives rely for security. For instance, attackers launching an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) can steal full cryptographic keys, violating the very sec...
Carlisle 2005 urban flood event simulation using cellular automata-based rapid flood spreading model
In this study, we propose a new method to apply the rapid flood spreading model (RFSM) using cellular automata (CA) to multiple inflows of Carlisle, UK. The purpose of the RFSM is to generate predictions of water depth and flood extent using less computer resource than required by two-dimensional...
Information seeking behaviour of physicians in Tanzania
The study investigated the information seeking behaviour of physicians at the Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) in Tanzania. Questionnaires were personally distributed to all physicians (n = 259) at MNH. The rate of response was 83 percent (n = 215). Based on the literature review, a Wilson (1996...