{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/ethics-in-rotten-apples-a-network","title":"Ethics in rotten apples: A network epidemiology approach for active cyber defense","arxiv_id":"2306.17533","date":"2023-06-30","proceeding":null,"authors":["Francesco Bonacina","Ignacio Echegoyen","Diego Escribano","Marcus Krellner","Francesco Paolo Nerini","Rasha Shanaz","Andreia Sofia Teixeira","Alberto Aleta"],"abstract":"As Internet of Things (IoT) technology grows, so does the threat of malware infections. A proposed countermeasure, the use of benevolent \"white worms\" to combat malicious \"black worms\", presents unique ethical and practical challenges. This study examines these issues via network epidemiology models and simulations, considering the propagation dynamics of both types of worms in various network topologies. Our findings highlight the critical role of the rate at which white worms activate themselves, relative to the user's system update rate, as well as the impact of the network structure on worm propagation. The results point to the potential of white worms as an effective countermeasure, while underscoring the ethical and practical complexities inherent in their deployment.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.17533v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.17533v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"ethics-in-rotten-apples-a-network","repo_url":"https://github.com/frappan/c72h-whiteworms","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}