Edinburgh Napier University

  Viral propagation is an important phenomenon of computer viruses. This paper focuses on viral movement and proposes the feasibility of a computer virus which is able to target a specific host, known as cruising. A novel component, based on target profiling of an intended victim, is introduced in a virus framework. This profile allows the virus to cruise to a specific intended target, which differs from normal virus propagation. To test the feasibility of this, a computer virus with an embedded target profile was designed, and experiments were conducted, which were compared with other 15 normal computer viruses. These experiments show that the cruising virus is able to target an intended victim, and induces a reduced overhead on Microsoft Outlook than other tested viruses, and consumes less network bandwidth. Finally, a method of overcoming the virus is presented. This uses system calls as application wrappers