Wormability: A Description for Vulnerabilities
Jose Nazario, Thomas Ptacek, Dug Song · 2004
It is well understood that not all vulnerabilities are or can become potential worms. However, the characteristics that lead to a vulnerability being used in a worm are poorly described and modeled. To facilitate evaluating new vulnerability announcements and to create a descriptive risk landscape, we introduce a mathematical description for a vulnerability’s “wormability,” the potential for the use of the vulnerability in worm propagation. This model provides an interrelation between the characteristics of the exploit required to leverage the vulnerability, the size and nature of the vulnerable population, the time intervals between the publication of the vulnerability and the current time, and the general worm landscape on the Internet as a whole. Using this model, we provide a measure of the possibility of several vulnerability announcements becoming worms in the near-future along with explanations of why some vulnerabilities are inherently not “wormable.”