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Self-adaptive Worms and Countermeasures

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Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4280))

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Abstract

In this paper, we address issues related to defending against wide-spreading worms on the Internet. We study a new class of worms called the self-adaptive worms. These worms dynamically adapt their propagation patterns to defensive countermeasures, in order to avoid or postpone detection, and to eventually infect more computers. We show that existing worm detection schemes cannot effectively defend against these self-adaptive worms. To counteract these worms, we introduce a game-theoretic formulation to model the interaction between worm propagator and defender. We show that the effective integration of multiple defensive schemes (e.g., worm detection, forensics analysis) is critical for defending against self-adaptive worms. We propose different combinations of defensive schemes for different kinds of self-adaptive worms, and evaluate the performance of defensive schemes based on real-world traffic traces.

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Yu, W., Zhang, N., Zhao, W. (2006). Self-adaptive Worms and Countermeasures. In: Datta, A.K., Gradinariu, M. (eds) Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems. SSS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4280. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49823-0_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49823-0_38

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-49018-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49823-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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