Computer Viruses Model Real Viruses
https://uk.norton.com/norton-blog/2016/02/the_8_most_famousco.html
This article, which provides a list of eight famous computer viruses, is a short but interesting read, if not a bit BuzzFeed-y in style. In class we considered the spread of actual viruses, such as the flu. Computer viruses (more appropriately malware, of which viruses are just one type) are aptly named, as they share many interesting similarities with the viruses that we deal with on a day to day basis. As such, there are some parallels between the network behavior of epidemics that we studied in class and the behavior of a computer virus during an “outbreak” of malware.
A common trait that got at least seven of the eight described viruses–Stuxnet may be the exception–a spot on this list is their ability to spread quickly and to a lot of hosts. Many of the viruses spread via email, which is in this case analogous to contact between two infected people. Because they are able to spread to any computer that is in some way contactable from an infected computer, these viruses have a high k value (in the model used in class). In the modern day, people are more aware of computer viruses (e.g. they probably wouldn’t open a .VBS file from a random email), and the p value, or ability of the virus to successfully spread on any given connection between computers, is a lot lower. At the time that a lot of these viruses ran rampant, however, awareness of such issues was far lower. It is such lack of awareness that allowed MyDoom to infect “16-25% of all emails” in 2004, making it just about as infectious as the flu, which infects about 20% of people in the United States annually.