An analysis of propagation and capability to attack of active P2P worms

Active P2P worms spread via hit-list constructed from host-cache of peers and have been one of the greatest threats to P2P network and Internet. P2P worms will improve the capability to attack by using some methods, such as increasing the number of infection threads. Two impact factors, the dynamic characteristic of P2P network and the number of infection threads, are considered in this research. We model the propagation of P2P worms and run the simulations. The results show that the dynamic characteristic of P2P network limits the spread speed of P2P worms. Most peers log in and log out frequently and as a result the target peer will be invalid to be located by P2P worms. In most cases the infection progress will be aborted. The spread speed of P2P worms cannot be accelerated infinitely by increasing the number of infection threads.