Overcoming the limitations in computer worm models

In less than two decades, computer viruses and worms have grown from an anomaly to an everyday occurrence. In response to such a threat, the academic community has started a set of research projects seeking to understand worm behavior through creation of models. Staniford created a model to explain the propagation behaviors of worms in computer network environments. Liljenstam added a spatial perspective to this model, varying the infection rate by the scanning worms' source and destination groups. These models have been shown to describe generic Internet-scale behavior adequately. However, they often ignore the nuances present on a highly localized network such as a campus-at a local university. In this manuscript, we make and validate the claim that certain real-world constraints, such as bandwidth and heterogeneity of hosts, affect the propagation of worms and thus should not be ignored when creating models for analysis of worm behaviors.