On the Asymptotic Behavior of Malware-Propagative Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper we study the spreading of malicious software over ad hoc networks, where legitimate nodes are prone to propagate the infections they receive from an attacker or their already infected neighbors. Considering the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) node infection paradigm we propose a probabilistic model, based on the theory of closed queueing networks, that aims at describing the aggregated behavior of the system when attacked by a malicious node. Due to its nature the model is able to deal more effectively with the stochastic behavior of the attacker and the inherent probabilistic nature of the wireless environment. The proposed model is able to describe accurately the asymptotic behavior of malware-propagative ad hoc networking environments, where the number of nodes is large. Using the Norton equivalent of the closed queueing network, we obtain analytical results for its steady state behavior, which in turn can be used to identify the critical parameters affecting the operation of the network.