UNLIKE their biological counterparts, computer worms don’t come out at night. Taking this into account could help computer security firms calculate when outbreaks are likely to pose the greatest risk, allowing them to set the installation of patches and filters to times when they will be most effective.
Most models of worm activity don’t allow for variation in the time zones in which computers become infected. “If a worm is released at different times, then the worm’s propagation dynamics will be different,” says Cliff Zou of the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Zou and collaborators David Dagon and Wenke…
