Abstract
A computer virus is a program that can generate possibly evolved copies of itself when it runs on a computer utilizing the machine’s resources, and by some means each copy may be propagated to another computer in which the copy will have a chance to get executed. And we call a virus instance as a viral agent since it is autonomous during its execution by choosing what action to perform in the computer without a user’s intervention. In the paper we develop a computational model of viral agents based on the persistent Turing machine (PTM) model which is a canonical model for sequential interaction. The model reveals the most essential infection property of computer viruses well and overcomes the inherent deficiency of Turing machine (TM) virus models in expressing interaction. Then on that basis we deduce several helpful theorems about viral agents. Finally we also discuss modeling of viral agent dynamics with cellular automata (CAs) and get some useful results.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Cohen, F.: Computational Aspects of Computer Viruses. Computers & Security 8(4), 325–344 (1989)
Adleman, L.M.: An Abstract Theory of Computer Viruses. In: Goldwasser, S. (ed.) CRYPTO 1988. LNCS, vol. 403, pp. 354–374. Springer, Heidelberg (1990)
Leitold, F.: Mathematical Model of Computer Viruses. In: EICAR 2000 Best Paper Proceedings, Brussels, Belgium, pp. 194–217 (2000)
Wegner, P.: Towards Empirical Computer Science. The Monist 82(1), 58–108 (1999)
Goldin, D., Smolka, S., Attie, P., Sonderegger, E.: Turing Machines, Transition Systems, and Interaction. Information and Computation 194(2), 101–128 (2004)
Tosic, P.T.: On Modeling and Analyzing Sparsely Networked Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems with Cellular and Graph Automata. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Modeling of Complex Systems by Cellular Automata, Reading, UK (to appear, 2006)
Brooks, R., Orr, N., Zachary, J., Griffin, C.: An Interacting Automata Model for Network Protection. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Fusion, Annapolis, USA, pp. 1090–1097 (2002)
Hao, J., Yin, J., Zhang, B.: Proof of the Virus Decidability Theorem Based on a Universal Turing Machine Model (in Chinese). In: Proceedings of the National Annual Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, Qinhuangdao, China, pp. 243–245 (2005)
Nechvatal, J., Sikora, S.: Red Ovoid Attack - Computer Virus Project 2.0 (2001), http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/nechvatal/redattack/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hao, J., Yin, J., Zhang, B. (2006). Modeling Viral Agents and Their Dynamics with Persistent Turing Machines and Cellular Automata. In: Shi, ZZ., Sadananda, R. (eds) Agent Computing and Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4088. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11802372_80
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11802372_80
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-36707-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36860-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)