Mathematical model for spreading dynamics of social network worms

Xin Sun*, Yan Heng Liu, Bin Li, Jin Li, Jia Wei Han, Xue Jie Liu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, a mathematical model for social network worm spreading is presented from the viewpoint of social engineering. This model consists of two submodels. Firstly, a human behavior model based on game theory is suggested for modeling and predicting the expected behaviors of a network user encountering malicious messages. The game situation models the actions of a user under the condition that the system may be infected at the time of opening a malicious message. Secondly, a social network accessing model is proposed to characterize the dynamics of network users, by which the number of online susceptible users can be determined at each time step. Several simulation experiments are carried out on artificial social networks. The results show that (1)the proposed mathematical model can well describe the spreading dynamics of social network worms; (2)weighted network topology greatly affects the spread of worms; (3)worms spread even faster on hybrid social networks.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberP04009
JournalJournal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment
Volume2012
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • applications to game theory and mathematical economics
  • communication
  • network dynamics
  • online dynamics
  • supply and information networks

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