Modelling and simulating worm propagation in static and dynamic traffic

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have no fixed infrastructure and instead relies on the vehicles themselves to provide network functionality. An attack scenario with potentially catastrophic consequences is the outbreak of mobile worm epidemic in these networks. This paper analyses the snapshot spreading results under an urban scenario with equilibrium traffic through modelling the mobility pattern, the communication channel, the medium access control (MAC) mechanism and the worm propagation process. The extensive Monte Carlo simulations uncovered the effects of the transmission range (from a typical minimum to a maximum), the minimum velocity and the maximum velocity (from the free flow to the congested traffic), the vehicle density (from a sparse topology to a dense spatial relation) and the MAC mechanism (from presence to absence) on epidemic spreading of such worms in VANETs. Furthermore, the authors simulate the wireless worm propagation in dynamic traffic with the same scenario as the static traffic by using a network simulation tool. The authors discuss the correlation between snapshot results and evolutive outcome, also analyse the reasons resulting in the local differences and finally uncover the interrelations between the affected rate and network parameters. The results are expected to help engineers design intelligent and automatic detection prevention strategies for VANETs.