Evaluation of Malware Spreading in Wireless Multihop Networks with Churn

Modeling malware spreading in wireless networks has attracted significant interest lately, since this will increase the robustness of such networks that constitute the lion’s share of Internet access nowadays. However, all of previous works have considered networks with fixed number of devices. In this work, we focus on users that can dynamically join and leave the network (node churn) as a result of the effects of malware, or their own operation, i.e. energy depletion. We adopt and adapt a queuing-based model for malware spreading for the case of wireless distributed networks with churn. The corresponding methodology captures the dynamics of SIS-type malware, where nodes are always prone to receive new or already spreading infections over a long period. The employed framework can be exploited for quantifying network reliability and study network behavior, which can be further used for increasing the robustness of the system against the most severe attacks.