1- Introduction
A fascination with the potential ability of computer programs to mimic biological processes such as
self-replication and the workings of the human brain dates from the earliest
days of computer science
In the remainder of this section, we give a very brief history of the problem of computer viruses
and describe our objectives in studying them. Then, we critique some previous work on the
spread of computer viruses, following it with a similar discussion of
the relevant literature on mathematical epidemiology
|
.
Until recently, much of the
work in this field (with the notable exception of genetic algorithms
)
was relegated to sporadic reporting in the Mathematical Games department in Scientific
American. In the last few years, however, a remarkable resurgence of interest in the analogies
between biological and computational mechanisms has revitalized a number of long-neglected
fields, including neural networks
,
cellular automata
,
and artificial life
.
Recently, a new concept has added itself to this intellectual milieu: the
computer virus
--
a self-replicating program that spreads within computing
systems, either by attaching itself parasitically to existing programs or by spawning
self-sufficient copies of itself 
.
We believe that this paper represents
the first serious attempt to adapt mathematical epidemiology to this problem.