A Study on Hierarchical Model of a Computer Worm Defense System

Basheer Suleiman, Rashid Husain, Saifullahi Muhammad

This research addresses the problem of computer worms in the modern Internet. A worm is similar to a virus. A worm is a self-propagating computer program that is being increasingly and widely used to attack the Internet. It is considered as a sub-class of a virus because it is also capable of spreading from one computer to another. Worms are also computer programs that are capable of replicating copies of themselves via network connections. What makes it different however is that unlike a computer virus a computer worm can run itself without any human intervention? Because of these two qualities of a worm, it is possible that there will be thousands of worms in a computer even if only one computer worm is transferred. For instance, the worm may send a copy of itself to every person listed in the e-mail address book. The worm sent may then send a copy of itself to every person who is listed in the address book of the person who receives the email. Because this may go on ad infinitum worms can not only cause damage to a single computer and to other person’s computer but it can only affect the functionality of Web servers and network servers to the point that they can no longer function efficiently. One example is the .blaster worm.