Stability analysis of a SEIQV epidemic model for rapid spreading worms

Internet worms have drawn significant attention owing to their enormous threats to the Internet. Due to the rapid spreading nature of Internet worms, it is necessary to implement automatic mitigation on the Internet. Inspired by worm vaccinations, we propose a novel epidemic model which combines both vaccinations and dynamic quarantine methods, referred to as SEIQV model. Using SEIQV model, we obtain the basic reproduction number that governs whether or not a worm is extinct. The impact of different parameters on this model is studied. Simulation results show that the performance of our model is significantly better than other models, in terms of decreasing the number of infected hosts and reducing the worm propagation speed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.