Open Problems in Computer Virology | Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Open Problems in Computer Virology

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal in Computer Virology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this article, we briefly review some of the most important open problems in computer virology, in three different areas: theoretical computer virology, virus propagation modeling and antiviral techniques. For each area, we briefly describe the open problems, we review the state of the art, and propose promising research directions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Cohen, F.: Computer Viruses. PhD Thesis, University of Southern California (1985)

  2. Adleman, L.M.: An abstract theory of computer viruses. In: Goldwasser, S. (ed.) Advances in cryptology – CRYPTO’88 – Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 403, pp. 354–374, Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer 1988

  3. Zuo Z., Zhou M. (2004). Some further theoretical results about computer viruses. Comput J 47(6):627–633

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bonfante G., Kaczmarek M., Marion J.-Y. (2006). On abstract computer virology from a recursion-theoretic perspective. J Comput Virol 1(3–4):45–54

    Google Scholar 

  5. Bonfante, G., Kaczmarek, M., Marion, J.-Y.: Toward an abstract computer virology. In: Proceedings of the ICTAC’05, lecture notes in computer science, vol. 3722, pp. 579–593. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer 2002, 41p (2005)

  6. Rogers, H.: Theory of recursive functions and effective computability. McGraw Hill 1967

  7. Spinellis D. (2003). Reliable identification of bounded-length viruses is np-complete. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 49(1):280–284

    Google Scholar 

  8. Papadimitriou C.H. (1994). Complexity theory. Addison Wesley, Reading

    Google Scholar 

  9. Filiol E. (2005). Computer viruses: from theory to applications, 1st edn. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

    Google Scholar 

  10. Zuo Z., Zhou M. (2003). On the time complexity of computer viruses. IEEE Trans Inf Theo 51(8):2962–2966

    Google Scholar 

  11. Chess, D.M., White, S.R.: An undetectable computer virus. In: Proceedings of the virus bulletin conference (2000)

  12. Filiol E. (2006). Advanced viral techniques: mathematical and algorithmic aspects. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

    Google Scholar 

  13. Jones N.D. (1997). Computability and complexity: from a programming perspective. MIT, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  14. MacWilliams F.J., Sloane N.J.A. (1977). The theory of error-correcting codes. North-Holland, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hirvensalo M. (2004). Quantum computing, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin HEidelberg New York

    Google Scholar 

  16. Brassard G. (1993). A bibliography of quantum cryptography. SIGACT News 24(3):16–20

    Google Scholar 

  17. Shor, P.W.: Algorithms for quantum computation: Discrete logarithms and factoring. In: Proceedings of the 35th annual symposium on foundations of computer science. Los Alamitos: IEEE Comput Soceity Press (1994)

  18. Staniford, S., Paxson, V., Weaver, N.: How to own the internet in your spare time. In: Proceedings of the 11th USENIX security symposium (Security ’02), (2002)

  19. Whalley, I., Arnold, B., Chess, D., Morar, J., Segal, A., Swimmer, M.: An environment for controlled worm replication and analysis. In: Proceedings of the virus bulletin conference (2000)

  20. White, S.R.: Open problems in computer virus research. In: Proceedings of the virus bulletin conference (1998)

  21. Kephart, J.O., White, S.R.: Directed-graph epidemiological models of computer viruses. In: IEEE symposium on security and privacy, pp 343–361 (1991)

  22. Hethcote H.W. (2000). The mathematics of infectious diseases. SIAM Rev 42(4):599–653

    Google Scholar 

  23. Billings L., Spears W.M., Schwartz I.B. (2002). A unified prediction of computer virus spread in connected networks. Phys Lett A 297:261–266

    Google Scholar 

  24. Zou C.C., Towsley D., Gong W.: Email virus propagation modeling and analysis. Technical report TR-CSE-03-04, University of Massachussets, Amherst

  25. Spafford E.H. (1989). Crisis and aftermath. Commun ACM 32(6):678–687

    Google Scholar 

  26. Permeh, R., Hassell, R.: Microsoft I.I.S. remote buffer overflow. Advisory AD20010618 (2001)

  27. Aleph1’ Levy E. Smashing the stack for fun and profit. Phrack Magazine 7(49) (1996).

  28. Labovitz, A.A.C., Bailey, M.: Shining light on dark address space. Technical report, Arbor networks (2001)

  29. Moore, D.: Network telescopes: Observing small or distant security events. In: Proceedings of the 11th USENIX security symposium (2002)

  30. Moore, D., Shannon, C., Brown, J.: Code-red: a case study on the spread and victims of an internet worm. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM/USENIX internet measurement workshop (2002)

  31. Serazzi, G., Zanero, S.: Computer virus propagation models. In: Calzarossa, M.C., Gelenbe, E. (eds.) Tutorials of the 11th IEEE/ACM Int’l symp. on modeling, analysis and simulation of computer and telecom – systems - MASCOTS 2003. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer 2003

  32. Zou, C.C., Gong, W., Towsley, D.: Code red worm propagation modeling and analysis. In: Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on computer and communications security, pp 138–147. New York: ACM Press 2002

  33. Wang, C., Knight, J.C., Elder, M.C.: On computer viral infection and the effect of immunization. In: ACSAC ’00: proceedings of the 16th annual computer security applications conference, Washington, DC, USA, p 246. Dublin: IEEE Computer Society (2000)

  34. Chen, Z., Gao, L., Kwiat, K.: Modeling the spread of active worms. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2003 (2003)

  35. El-FarArun I.K., Ford R., Ondi A., Pancholi M. (2005). Suppressing the spread of email malcode using short-term message recall. J Comput Virol 1(1–2):4–12

    Google Scholar 

  36. Zou, C.C., Gao, L., Gong, W., Towsley, D.: Monitoring and early warning for internet worms. In: Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on computer and communication security, pp 190–199. New York: ACM Press 2003

  37. Chien, E., Peter, S.: Blended attacks: Exploits, vulnerabilities and buffer-overflow techniques in computer viruses. In: Proceedings of virus bulletin conference 2002, pp 1–35 Oxfordshire: Virus Bulletin Ltd (2002)

  38. Helenius, M.: Realisation ideas for secure system design. In: Gattiker, U.E. (ed.) EICAR Conference Best Paper Proceedings, Copenhagen (2003)

  39. Yisrael, R. Checksumming techniques for anti-viral purposes. In: Proceedings of 1st international virus bulletin conference (1991)

  40. Yisrael, R.: Integrity checking for anti-viral purposes: theory and practice. improved version of earlier conference paper http://www.virusbtn.com/OtherPapers/Integrity/integrity-ps.zip (1994)

  41. Bontchev, V. Possible virus attacks against integrity programs and how to prevent them. In: Proceedings of 2nd international virus bulletin conference, pp 131–141 (1992)

  42. Zou, C.C., Gong, W., Towsley, D.: Worm propagation modeling and analysis under dynamic quarantine defense. In: Proceedings of the ACM CCS workshop on rapid malcode (WORM’03) (2003)

  43. Moore, D., Shannon, C., Voelker, G.M., Savage, S.: Internet quarantine: requirements for containing self-propagating code. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM (2003)

  44. Castaneda, F., Sezer, E.C., Xu, J.: Worm vs. worm: preliminary study of an active counter-attack mechanism. In: WORM ’04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM workshop on Rapid malcode, pp 83–93. New York: ACM Press, 2004

  45. Brunnstein, K.: From antivirus to antimalware software and beyond: another approach to the protection of customers from dysfunctional system behaviour. In: Proceedings of 22nd national information systems security conference, 1999

  46. Goldberg L.A., Goldberg P.W., Phillips C.A., Sorkin G.B. (1998). Constructing computer virus phylogenies. J Algorithms 26:188–208

    Google Scholar 

  47. Karim M.E., Walenstein A., Lakhotia A. (2005). Malware phylogeny generation using permutations of code. J Comput Virol 1(1–2):13–23

    Google Scholar 

  48. Jarmo, N.:What makes symbian malware tick. In: Proceedings of virus bulletin conference, pp 115–120. England: Virus Bulletin Ltd 2005

  49. Reynaud-Plantey D. (2005). New threats of java viruses. J Comput Virol 1(3–4):32–43

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole Supérieure et d’application des Transmissions, Laboratoire de virologie et de cryptologie, B.P. 18, 35998, Rennes, France

    Eric Filiol

  2. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Tampere, Kanslerinrinne 1, FIN-33014, Tampere, Finland

    Marko Helenius

  3. Dip. Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Via Ponzio, 34/5, I-20133, Milano, Italy

    Stefano Zanero

Authors
  1. Eric Filiol
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Marko Helenius
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Stefano Zanero
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eric Filiol.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Filiol, E., Helenius, M. & Zanero, S. Open Problems in Computer Virology. J Comput Virol 1, 55–66 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-005-0008-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-005-0008-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation