Viewing biological and computer viruses as manifestations of games

Abstract

Computer viruses exhibit many similarities with biological viruses. Thus, a closer examination of this association might lead to some new perspectives and, even, to new enhanced capabilities that will facilitate the overall effort to tackle and, why not, eradicate them. Game theory has long been considered as a useful tool for modeling viral behavior. In this paper, we establish certain, important we hope, correlations between a well-known virus, namely VirLock, with the bacteriophage $\phi6$. Moreover, following this line of thought, we also suggest efficient and, at the same time, practical strategies that may significantly alleviate the infection problems caused by VirLock and any other virus having similar traits.