The effect of infected external computers on the spread of viruses: A compartment modeling study

Inevitably, there exist infected computers outside of the Internet. This paper aims to understand how infected external computers affect the spread of computer viruses. For that purpose, a new virus–antivirus spreading model, which takes into account the effect of infected/immune external computers, is established. A systematic study shows that, unlike most previous models, the proposed model admits no virus-free equilibrium and admits a globally asymptotically stable viral equilibrium. This result implies that it would be practically impossible to eradicate viruses on the Internet. As a result, inhibiting the virus prevalence to below an acceptable level would be the next best thing. A theoretical study reveals the effect of different parameters on the steady virus prevalence. On this basis, a number of suggestions are made so as to contain virus spreading.