Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential
The fast growing market for smart phones coupled with their almost constant on-line presence makes these devices the new targets of malicious code (virus) writers. To aggravate the issue, the security level of these devices is far below the state-of-the art of what is used in personal computers. It...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Berlin Heidelberg
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8482-0318 |
| _version_ | 1826200640842366976 |
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| author | Wang, Pu Gonzalez, Marta C. Menezes, Ronaldo Barabási, Albert-László |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Wang, Pu Gonzalez, Marta C. Menezes, Ronaldo Barabási, Albert-László |
| author_sort | Wang, Pu |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The fast growing market for smart phones coupled with their almost constant on-line presence makes these devices the new targets of malicious code (virus) writers. To aggravate the issue, the security level of these devices is far below the state-of-the art of what is used in personal computers. It has been recently found that the topological spread of multimedia message service (MMS) viruses is highly restricted by the underlying fragmentation of the call graph—the term topological here refers to the explicit use of the call graph topology to find vulnerable phones. In this paper, we study MMS viruses under another type of spreading behavior that locates vulnerable phones by generating a random list of numbers to be contacted, generally referred to as scanning. We find that hybrid MMS viruses including some level of scanning are more dangerous to the mobile community than their standard topological counterparts. Interestingly, this paper shows that the topological and scanning behaviors of MMS viruses can be more damaging in high and low market share cases, respectively. The results also show that given sufficient time, sophisticated viruses may infect a large fraction of susceptible phones without being detected. Fortunately, with the improvement of phone providers’ monitoring ability and the timely installations of patches on infected phones, one can contain the spread of MMS viruses. Our findings lead to a better understanding on how one could prevent the spread of mobile-phone viruses even in light of new behaviors such as scanning. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:39:35Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/103101 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:39:35Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1031012022-10-01T05:06:48Z Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential Wang, Pu Gonzalez, Marta C. Menezes, Ronaldo Barabási, Albert-László Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Gonzalez, Marta C. The fast growing market for smart phones coupled with their almost constant on-line presence makes these devices the new targets of malicious code (virus) writers. To aggravate the issue, the security level of these devices is far below the state-of-the art of what is used in personal computers. It has been recently found that the topological spread of multimedia message service (MMS) viruses is highly restricted by the underlying fragmentation of the call graph—the term topological here refers to the explicit use of the call graph topology to find vulnerable phones. In this paper, we study MMS viruses under another type of spreading behavior that locates vulnerable phones by generating a random list of numbers to be contacted, generally referred to as scanning. We find that hybrid MMS viruses including some level of scanning are more dangerous to the mobile community than their standard topological counterparts. Interestingly, this paper shows that the topological and scanning behaviors of MMS viruses can be more damaging in high and low market share cases, respectively. The results also show that given sufficient time, sophisticated viruses may infect a large fraction of susceptible phones without being detected. Fortunately, with the improvement of phone providers’ monitoring ability and the timely installations of patches on infected phones, one can contain the spread of MMS viruses. Our findings lead to a better understanding on how one could prevent the spread of mobile-phone viruses even in light of new behaviors such as scanning. National Natural Science Foundation (China) (No. 51208520) James S. McDonnell Foundation (Twenty-First Century Initiative in Studying Complex Systems) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (IIS-0513650 program) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (ITR program (DMR-0426737)) National Science Foundation (U.S.) (DDDAS program (CNS-0540348)) Central South University of Technology (China) (Shenghua Scholar Program) 2016-06-14T15:10:06Z 2016-06-14T15:10:06Z 2013-06 2016-05-23T12:11:25Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1615-5262 1615-5270 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103101 Wang, Pu, Marta C. González, Ronaldo Menezes, and Albert-László Barabási. "Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential." International Journal of Information Security 12:5 (October 2013), pp. 383-392. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8482-0318 en http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10207-013-0203-z International Journal of Information Security Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg application/pdf Springer Berlin Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
| spellingShingle | Wang, Pu Gonzalez, Marta C. Menezes, Ronaldo Barabási, Albert-László Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential |
| title | Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential |
| title_full | Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential |
| title_fullStr | Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential |
| title_full_unstemmed | Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential |
| title_short | Understanding the spread of malicious mobile-phone programs and their damage potential |
| title_sort | understanding the spread of malicious mobile phone programs and their damage potential |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103101 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8482-0318 |
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