Swarm virus - Next-generation virus and antivirus paradigm?

Abstract

In this article, we outline a possible dynamics, structure, and a behavior of a hypothetical (up to now) swarm malware as a background for a future antimalware system. We suggest how to capture and visualize behavior of such malware when it walks through the file system of an operating system. The swarm virus prototype, designed here, mimics a swarm system behavior and thus follows the main idea underlying the swarm intelligence algorithms. The information of the prototype's behavior is stored and visualized in the form of a complex network, reflecting virus communication and swarm behavior. The network nodes are then individual virus instances. The network has certain properties associated with its structure that can be used by the virus instances in its activities like locating target and executing payload on the right object. As the paper shows, the swarm behavior pattern can be incorporated also to an antimalware systems, and can be analyzed for a future computer system protection.