A Computational Model of Computer Worms Based on Persistent Turing Machines

The traditional Turing machines (TMs) are not suitable for modeling interactive computation. Persistent Turing machines (PTMs) are a canonical model for sequential interaction and are equivalent to sequential interaction machines (SIMs) in expressiveness. Naturally it can be used to model computer worm agents that interact with external network environments in a sequential way abstractly. In the paper a computational model of worms based on PTMs is developed which reveals the infection, evolution and interaction abilities of worms quite well. Some relevant theorems about worms are also deduced according to the worm model. The model overcomes the inherent deficiency of TM virus models in describing interaction and covers entirely all current worms since it adequately reveals the essential abilities of worms