Predation and the cost of replication: New approaches to malware prevention?

Computer viruses and worms are often compared to their biological counterparts. Researchers in the field speak of “infection”, “innate immunity” and “epidemics” – all expressions with distinctly biological connotations. However, despite the similarity of language, there are marked and important differences between computer viruses and their biological namesake. In this paper, some of the most critical differences are examined, and an illustration of how they may limit the application of biologically inspired defenses to computer virus spread is given. Furthermore, due to our historical lack of success in containing computer virus outbreaks, we apply a different biological metaphor to the problem: that of predator and prey. In particular, we focus on the issue of the cost of predation, and note that the essentially “free” predation computer viruses enjoy limits the applicability of biological analogies of protection in the global computing infrastructure.