Impact of human factors on email worm propagation

Abstract

One of the most prevalent security problems in network is the rampant propagation of email worms. Unlike active worms, the email worm has to be activated by user action in order to spread further. This paper deals with modeling email worm propagation by analyzing and combining human factors. Impact of human factors on email worm propagation is investigated and discussed. Results of email worm propagation under a practical simulation environment show that the presented model well describes the email worm behavior. Conclusions are also drawn that infection probability decreases during evolution of worm infection due to the security consciousness rising, and highly connected nodes are more susceptible.