Dynamic malware attack in energy-constrained mobile wireless networks

Large scale proliferation of wireless technologies are dependent on developing reliable security measures against outbreaks of malware. The first step toward this goal is investigating the possible attack strategies of wireless malware and the extent of damage they can incur. A malware in a mobile wireless network relies on the infrastructure of the network and the constrained resources to spread itself. In this paper, we consider a battery-constrained mobile wireless network. The worm at each infective node at any given time may choose to amplify the transmission range and elevate the media scanning rate and thus increase the chance of contacting susceptible nodes and accelerate its spread. However, a larger transmission range and an elevated media scanning rate results in (a) easier detection of the malware and thus more effective counter-measure by the network, and (b) faster depletion of the battery and thus losing the node. Even if depleting the battery is an objective of the malware, early loss of infective nodes may thwart the spread of the malware. We assume the viewpoint of the malware and cast the problem of dynamically selecting the transmission range and media accessing rate in the infective nodes as an optimal control problem. We utilize Pontryagin´s Maximum Principle to find an optimum solution. Moreover, we investigate the structural properties of an optimal solution to develop intuition about the nature of optimum attacks.