Defending passive worms in unstructured P2P networks based on healthy file dissemination

Propagation of passive worms in unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks can result in significant damages and the loss of network security. This paper obtains the average delay for all peers in the entire transmitting process, and proposes a mathematical model for simulating unstructured P2P networks-based passive worms' propagation taking into account network throughput. According to the file popularity which follows the Zipf distribution, we propose a new healthy file dissemination-based defense strategy. Some parameters related to the propagation of passive worms are studied based on the proposed model. Finally, the simulation results verify the effectiveness of our model, which can provide an important guideline in the control of passive worms in unstructured P2P networks. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.