Conference proceeding
Software Diversity as a Defense against Viral Propagation: Models and Simulations
Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on principles of advanced and distributed simulation
01 Jun 2005
Abstract
The use of software diversity has often been discussed in the research literature as an effectivemeans to break up the software monoculture present on the Internet and to thus prevent malcode propagation. However, there have been no quantitative studies that examine the effectiveness of software diversity on viral propagation. In this paper, we study both real (an IPv6 BGP topology) and synthetically generated (an Erdős-Rényi random graph) network topologies and employ a popular metric called the epidemic threshold to measure resistance to viral propagation in the presence of software diversity. We show that one can increase the epidemic threshold of a network even with a naïve, random distribution of diverse software on the nodes of a network. We also show that an algorithm-driven diversity assignment further increases the epidemic threshold. These results confirm the value of strategic topology-sensitive assignment of diversity to improving the tolerance of a network tomalcode propagation.
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Details
- Title
- Software Diversity as a Defense against Viral Propagation
- Creators
- Adam O'Donnell - Drexel UniversityHarish Sethu - Drexel UniversityIEEE Computer Society
- Publication Details
- Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on principles of advanced and distributed simulation
- Series
- PADS '05
- Publisher
- IEEE Computer Society
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000230455800025
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-26844504054
- Other Identifier
- 991019312443804721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Robotics