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From: ropg@ooc.uva.nl (Rop Gonggrijp)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: Measuring the Spread of Viruses
Message-ID: <0006.9009191742.AA13188@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 18 Sep 90 16:26:14 GMT
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Approved: krvw@sei.cmu.edu

yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

>Has anyone done any work on measuring the degree to which viruses (as
>a whole or as individual strains) have spread throughout the
>population of personal computers?  This could be done either by
>collecting statistics on the number of reported cases or, more
>elaborately, sending out surveys to various sites
>(academic/commercial/government) and individual users (e.g.
>subscribers to various magazines).

I know of a case where the speed virus propagation was measured. The
virus we now call 'The Internet Worm' and the researcher was Robert T.
Morris [Jr.].  (Yeah, I know, it was a worm and not a virus). Whether
you like it or not, the best way to measure propagation is by letting
out a relatively harmless 'test virus'