Modeling Malware Propagation in Gnutella Type Peer-to-Peer Networks

Overview

A key emerging and popular communication paradigm, primarily employed for information dissemination, is Peer-To-Peer (P2P) networking. This paper models the spread of malware in decentralized, Gnutella type of peer-to-peer networks. The study reveals that the existing bound on the spectral radius governing the possibility of an epidemic outbreak needs to be revised in the context of a P2P network. The authors formulate an analytical model that emulates the mechanics of a decentralized Gnutella type of peer network and study the spread of malware on such networks.