Main

The realization that network models possess non-trivial properties1,2,3, such as a diameter that grows logarithmically with network size4 and a non-existent percolation threshold5, implies that for predominant epidemic models the epidemic will not stop by immunizing any finite subset of nodes.

However, current immunization strategies6,7,8,9,10,11 focus on removing nodes from the network a priori by immunizing them before the epidemic outburst. In the absence of complete knowledge of the network topology, these strategies are confined to a random character. Thus, these strategies require, in most cases, the removal of almost all of the nodes, and in all cases7 the removal of at least a quarter of the nodes.

In contrast, we introduce a dynamic distributed immunization strategy, where the vaccine development and immunization processes depend on, and interact with, the virus dissemination process itself, thus creating a codependency between virus dissemination and immunization.

In the context of traditional biological epidemiology, there was little sense in considering dynamic, distributed immunization strategies. This is mainly owing to the fact that the timescale gap between epidemic outburst and vaccine creation is very large, and that there is no ‘infectious’ delivery mechanism available for biological vaccines.

The world of computer viruses has characteristics that are diametrically different. First, new viruses emerge at an increasing pace. Second, computer viruses are much less complex than their biological counterparts, and are much easier to analyse and to characterize12,13. Thus, vaccine development can be achieved on a timescale comparable to that of the infection process. On the negative side, however, the viral process possesses an inherent lead-time advantage: it appears before the vaccine, as a new vaccine can be created only after the new virus has started percolating the network. This fact, in itself, imposes strong constrains14 on the usability of dynamic approaches. However, as we will demonstrate below, one can devise design principles that compensate for the lead-time advantage of the virus and that support the deployment of efficient dynamic immunization systems.

We discuss the concrete example of the e-mail network. In this network, an e-mail account constitutes a node whereas the directed edges of the network are the entries in the account’s address book. The virus spreads through the account address book with a timescale that ranges from several hours to a number of days. This timescale is an upper bound of the vaccine generation timescale for any effective epidemic containment solution. Studies9,15 show that this network’s degree distribution (that is, the distribution, P(k), which governs the probability that a node will have degree k, or, in other words have k edges attached to it) is very broad and can be modelled by a scale-free network, which is a network with a power-law-degree distribution. We verified this through a survey of 502 individuals, which we also used to calibrate the parameters of our simulations.

In the past few years, virus spreading on such networks has been studied intensively using the static percolation framework11. The dynamics that we introduce stem from this framework and allow for a richer set of effects.

Distributed immunization

In the present article we define a framework for the study of immunization strategies that react in real time to the emergence and propagation pattern of a virus. The objective is to find the strategies that minimize the size of the infected cluster. The size of the virus cluster is the portion of infected nodes after a time period that we take to infinity. The size of the immunized clusters is defined consistently as the aggregate number of immunized nodes. The underlying assumptions of our model are as follows. (a) As in the susceptible, infected, removed (SIR) epidemiologic model16,17, a node can be in one of three modes with respect to a specific virus: susceptible, infected or immunized (removed).

However, unlike the SIR model, a node cannot change its mode once it is either infected or immunized during the relevant timescale. This model is in close agreement with the behaviour observed on the Internet today, as an increasing number of viruses shut down security-related software on infecting a new node. (b) An infected node releases the virus to all of its neighbours with a delay time that is either deterministic or stochastic. The virus is transmitted to all neighbours and not a stochastic subset, which makes fighting the virus harder. (c) Some nodes, in accordance with a given probability function, may recognize their own infection, identify its characteristics and create an immunization agent, as the infection process progresses13,18. The agent then spreads to all neighbours and immunizes the susceptible ones. In addition, we define: (i) the average infection delay, also known as the disease-generation time, tinf, as the average time required by a virus in a given node to infect a neighbouring node; (ii) the average immunization delay, timm, as the average time required by an immunization agent in a given node to immunize a neighbouring node; (iii) the average development delay, tdev, as the average time required by an infected node to develop an immunization agent.

In essence, the described dynamics involve a competition between two types of branching process on a network19, where the first type creates a connected virus cluster and the second creates a collection of immunized clusters. Unlike centralized approaches, this approach nullifies the need for a global knowledge of the topology. We consider the deterministic case, where the various delays associated with the infection, agent creation and immunization are all constant, and where all neighbouring nodes become infected or immunized simultaneously. The resulting dynamics show a sharp transition at the point where tinf=timm+tdev. In the deterministic case, when tinf is below this threshold, the virus infects the entire network, whereas when above it, the dynamics are governed by the agent development pace and the network topology characteristics. This sharp transition around the critical value also remains true when the delays are stochastic variables. In the discrete-time simulations we present below, all of the time parameters equal one time step, which in turn gives the virus a head start of one time step. As presented in Fig. 1, this difference is enough to let the virus infect the entire network when the virus and immunization agent spread on the same network.

Figure 1: Comparing infection process evolution with (bottom) and without (top) immunization edges.
figure 1

On the top the network is being infected fully by the virus. On the bottom the virus cluster is reduced by more than half by introducing immunization edges. The blue (dark green) edges represent the original network (further immunization) edges. During the spread, an edge is coloured in red (turquoise) if it was used to infect (immunize) a node. In both cases we present four snapshots of each network in different times. In addition, we present the time (t) varying graphs for the cluster development over time. The blue, red and green lines are used to present the size of the susceptible, infected and immunized clusters, respectively. Note that in the bottom set, initially in snapshots 1 and 2, the virus cluster develops uninterruptedly until the immunization agent manages to escape the border of the virus cluster, in snapshot 3, and start immunizing the network; therefore the agent manages to immunize most of the network even though the virus had a head start.

Partially correlated networks

To unleash the potential of the immunization system, we offer a slight modification to the problem by introducing a relatively small number of edges to the network topology. These immunization edges, which are used exclusively by the immunization agents, have a dramatic effect on the ability of a dynamic scheme to contain the virus by offering access to a parallel network with identical nodes and almost identical edges as the original network. These edges connect the node that produced the immunization agent to nodes that are beyond its immediate neighbourhood as defined by the initial network. In our example, the parallel network is the phone-book network, which is strongly correlated with the e-mail network.

The study of networks that connect the same nodes but have different sets of links is only in its infancy20,21; however, even now it is clear that such networks are qualitatively different from each of their components taken separately. This is owing to the complete change in the topology and the metrics that are induced in each of the networks through their interaction. In practical terms, this means that the immunization agents are effectively deployed ‘behind enemy lines’, unconstrained by the boundaries of the surrounding virus cluster. Once in this position, they can alter the topology of the space remaining at the virus’s disposal by immunizing nodes that otherwise would have belonged to the infected cluster. In Fig. 1 we illustrate the difference between a network with no extra immunization edges and a network that does possess several of these edges. The difference in the dynamics is further illustrated in Supplementary Information, Video S1.

The effect of introducing extra immunization edges, along with the original network, amounts to the generation of a pair of partially correlated networks22,23, which we define as follows: two given networks G1=(V,E1),G2=(V,E2) are partially correlated with overlap p if is greater than zero. Here, V represents the set of nodes in a network and E the number of edges.

Starting with our initial network G1, we create a new network G2 for the immunizing agent by adding to G1 a set of edges e1 that do not belong to G1. Using the relative edge addition, q=|e1|/|E1|, the overlap will be

We then alter the distributed immunization dynamics in the following way. The virus spreads through the original network G1, whereas the immunizing agent is deployed through the partially correlated network G2, which is obtained by randomly adding q|E1| edges to G1. By doing so, we enable the immunizing agent to break through the virus cluster and to immunize the network.

In the Methods section we show analytically that for the discrete-time deterministic model the relative size of the infected cluster (that is, the ratio of infected to immunized clusters), as a function of the relative edge addition q, has a power-law upper bound with a −1 power exponent.

In addition, we have studied the problem through network simulations. In Fig. 2 we present simulation results that show a power-law ratio dependence with an exponent that approaches −4/3.

Figure 2: Relative virus cluster size as a function of immunization link density (log–log scale).
figure 2

The dependence of the relative infected cluster size on the relative edge addition q, resulting from simulations over uncorrelated, scale-free networks with power exponent −3, mean degree 4 and network size in the range 50,000–200,000 nodes. The ratio dependence shows a power-law form, with an exponent close to −4/3. The error bars present the 95% confidence interval.

Thus, we can conclude that dynamic immunization, which is used over partially correlated networks, can reduce the size of a virus cluster considerably with negligible costs.

Honey pots

To systemize and improve our scheme we present the honey-pot architecture13 (the name originating from their function as traps). This architecture has two main benefits over the random solution. First, it is much more realistic and technically feasible. Second, it is considerably more efficient than a random deployment of immunizing edges, and, given the same immunization edge budget, it minimizes the virus cluster to sizes that can be as small as a fourth of the respective cluster in the random-edge case. These features make this architecture an attractive alternative to current immune systems.

The aim of this architecture is to introduce a virtual superhub that transforms the shortcomings of a scale-free network, which is considerably impaired when its largest hubs are removed3, into an advantage.

The honey-pot architecture is constructed in the following manner. We exclusively implant the ability to develop an immunizing agent into a set of nodes called honey pots. The honey pots are embedded randomly within the network such that any virus that spreads through the network will be likely to reach them promptly. Finally, all honey pots are connected in a complete graph topology using special edges that only allow the immunizing agents to traverse along them.

Initially, the virus spreads freely, until it infects the first honey pot and thus triggers an immunization agent development process. By this time, the expected size of the virus cluster equals the size of the network divided by the number of honey pots. As the virus continues to spread, all honey pots are informed of the new virus, and each honey pot then begins to function as the root of a separate infectious immunization process. The honey pots have the effect of a superhub, with a degree that is the sum of the degrees of the separate honey pots.

In the Methods section we calculate an upper bound for the relative virus cluster using the honey-pot architecture. We show that if the number of honey pots, as a function of the network size N, f(N), grows faster than , the size of the virus cluster will approach a zero portion of the network, as the network size approaches infinity. In the case where f(N)=β N (where β is some finite constant), we get

where α is a characteristic constant of the topology, Vt(N) is the size of the virus cluster and At(N) is the aggregate size of the immunized clusters after time step t, as a function of network size N. When , the relative special edge addition due to the honey pots is kept constant in the infinite size limit. This analytic estimation is validated through simulations, and is presented in Figs 3 and 4 and illustrated in Supplementary Information, Video S2. Comparing the random architecture with the honey-pot architecture, we observe in Fig. 5 a significant improvement owing to the honey pots that grows with network size.

Figure 3: Relative virus cluster size as a function of system size for different honey-pot densities.
figure 3

The simulations ran over uncorrelated, scale-free networks with power exponent −3, mean degree 4 and network size in the range 25,000–200,000 nodes. The virus cluster is multiplied by the square of the honey-pot density to cancel its effect in accordance with equation (1). The curves show a power-law dependence with exponent equal to −1.08, compared with the expected exponent of −1. The error bars present the 95% confidence interval.

Figure 4: Relative virus cluster size as a function of honey-pot density for different system sizes.
figure 4

The simulations ran over uncorrelated, scale-free networks with power exponent −3, mean degree 4 and network size in the range 25,000–200,000 nodes. The virus cluster is multiplied by the network’s size to cancel its effect in accordance with equation (1). The curves show a power-law dependence with exponent equal to −1.8, compared with the expected exponent of −2. The error bars present the 95% confidence interval.

Figure 5: Comparison of virus cluster sizes for the random-edge and the honey-pot architectures.
figure 5

The different sets present different relative edge additions, q. The clusters in the random case are always larger than the clusters in the honey-pot case; as the network size grows, so does the gap between the two architectures. The reason behind this is that, whereas in the random case the cluster size remains fairly constant as we vary the network size, in the honey-pot case as the network grows, so does the effectiveness of the honey pots. This effect is mostly noted in the middle range of the density values where the immunization has an effect but the virus cluster is not extremely small. The error bars present the 95% confidence interval.

In Fig. 6 we address the question of robustness of these approaches to different topology characteristics, presenting an analysis of the effect of varying the degree distribution power exponent on the virus cluster; we show that it is minor compared with the dependence on the immunization edge density.

Figure 6: The dependence of the virus cluster on the degree distribution power exponent.
figure 6

We ran a sensitivity analysis where we varied the power exponent of the Pareto degree distribution characterizing the underlying topology between 1.8 and 3, which includes all degree distributions found in real scale-free networks. As can be seen, the effectiveness of the immunization process grows with the power exponent, owing to the fact that lower exponents entail a higher density of edges, which allows the virus to advance faster. However, this variation is still minor compared with variations in the relative edge addition, q, and in the architecture type, which are illustrated by the different data sets presented. The error bars present the 95% confidence interval. HP = honey pot.

Deployment and feasibility

Faced with the systematic defeats in the war against computer viruses, a paradigm shift may be required. We propose such a shift from the current, static, centralized immunization strategies to a dynamic-distributed-immune-system approach. We demonstrate the effectiveness of such an architecture in protecting large networks, both when built randomly or when designed artificially. Although the presentation of a practical system design is outside the scope of this article, such a system is certainly deployable. In the past, it has been shown that distributed systems that monitor the Internet in real time24,25 are not only feasible but are also very effective. Shifting the focus of an antivirus system from cleaning a single machine to containing the epidemic enables the introduction of accurate automatic triggering within a timescale of less than a minute, which allows such a system to surpass the tinf=timm+tdev barrier. This enables the system to compete with and defeat the spread of the epidemic. The architectures we have presented constitute a starting point that can be further improved, for example, by designing algorithms for the placement of the honey pots7.

Methods

Analysis of the random-edge effect

Given a network with degree distribution P(k), let us calculate an upper bound on the rate of growth of the virus cluster, Vt(N), where N is the network’s size and t is the time index. Let us examine the portion of the t+1 time layer, lt+1, with degree k:

where m is the average node degree, k ′ is a summation index over all degrees and C holds the topological clustering properties of the network, which reduce the number of effective neighbours. Even though, in general, C may be a complicated expression, and may also depend on k, in our mean-field approximation we refer to it as a constant of the topology. As the sum does not depend on k, we can calculate it independently and call it at+1. Then, lt+1(k)=at+1k P(k). Substituting in (2), gives us

We call the outcome of the new sum α. As it does not depend on k, we find that lt+1=lt·α. If α is larger than 1 we get an exponential growth. If N is large enough so that finite-size effects are irrelevant we get

Let us turn to the immunized cluster(s). Define At(N) to be the aggregate size of the immunized clusters at time step t as a function of N. Given a relative edge addition q and an average node degree m, the expected number of immune specific edges is q m, and each may initiate an immunized cluster. Once started, the immunized clusters also grow with ratio α. Thus, At when N is large enough is

which can be compacted to

The ratio of the size of the virus cluster to that of the immunized clusters is

from which we get an upper-bound (as all our assumptions were in favour of the virus cluster), power-law dependence with exponent −1 on q for the discrete-time, deterministic model.

Analysis of the honey-pot architecture effect

We would like to calculate an upper bound for the ratio Vt(N)/At(N) for very large Ns and when t approaches infinity.

Let us assume that there are f(N) honey pots distributed randomly in the network, all connected in a complete graph using immunization edges. Then, clearly, the expected virus cluster size when a honey pot is infected with a virus for the first time is N/f(N). At that time, the boundary outside the virus cluster will have (N/f(N))(α−1) nodes. At the next time step, f(N) nodes will be ‘infected’ with the immunization agent. From this point forward, we assume that (in the deterministic case) the virus cluster and the immunized clusters grow as an uninterrupted geometric series. Then, with increasing t, their ratio approaches

From this equation we can see that whenever f(N) grows faster than the size of the virus cluster will approach a zero portion of the network, as the network size approaches infinity. In the case where f(N)=β N, we get

which means that we have a power-law relation between this ratio and the relative amount of honey-pot nodes, β, with an exponent equal to −2. This result is not surprising, as is the function for which the relative special edge addition due to the honey pots is kept constant in the infinite size limit.