Modeling and Analysis of the Spread of Malware with the Influence of User Awareness

Abstract

By incorporating the security awareness of computer users into the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model, this study proposes a new malware propagation model, named the SID model, where D compartment denotes the group of nodes with user awareness. Through qualitative analysis, the basic reproductive number $R_0$ is given. Furthermore, it is proved that the virus-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if $R_0$ is less than one, whereas the viral equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if $R_0$ is greater than one. Then, some numerical examples are given to demonstrate the analytical results. Finally, we put forward some efficient control measures according to the theoretical and experimental analysis.