2020/06/09 by Hesham ElSawy, Elsawy, Hesham, Mustafa A. Kishk +3
Computer Science · #Advanced Malware Detection Techniques #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Theory (cs.IT) #Network Security and Intrusion Detection #Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.05059
openalex publication_date 2020/06/09 · openalex created_date 2022/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Billions of wireless devices are foreseen to participate in big data\naggregation and smart automation in order to interface the cyber and physical\nworlds. Such large-scale ultra-dense wireless connectivity is vulnerable to\nmalicious software (malware) epidemics. Malware worms can exploit multi-hop\nwireless connectivity to stealthily diffuse throughout the wireless network\nwithout being noticed to security servers at the core network. Compromised\ndevices can then be used by adversaries to remotely launch cyber attacks that\ncause large-scale critical physical damage and threaten public safety. This\narticle overviews the types, threats, and propagation models for malware\nepidemics in large-scale wireless networks (LSWN). Then, the article proposes a\nnovel and cost efficient countermeasure against malware epidemics in LSWN,\ndenoted as spatial firewalls. It is shown that equipping a strategically\nselected small portion (i.e., less than 10 %) of the devices with\nstate-of-the-art security mechanisms is sufficient to create spatially secured\nzones that quarantine malware epidemics. Quarantined infected devices are then\ncured by on-demand localized software patching. To this end, several firewall\ndeployment strategies are discussed and compared.\n