Pre-Vaccination and Quarantine Approach for Defense Against Worms Propagation of Malicious Objects in Wireless Sensor Networks

Network security poses a challenge to wireless sensor networks (WSNs) achieving its true potential. It is hard to tackle due to operational constraints of networks. Worms have become an emergent threat to the wireless networks. The spread of worms in the network is epidemic in nature. This article proposes a novel mathematical model with pre-vaccination and quarantine for study of worm propagation dynamics in WSN that is based on epidemic model. Further, the authors have devised an expression to determine threshold communication radius and node density. The objective of this proposed model is to study the propagation dynamics of worms in wireless sensor networks. Through the model, investigate the stability condition of networks in the presence of malicious codes. The experimental studies indicate that the proposed model outperforms in terms of security and energy efficiency over other existing models. It is a leap toward worm-controlling mechanisms in sensor networks. Finally, the control mechanism and performance of the proposed model is validated through extensive simulation results.