Novel computer viruses and worms can sweep the world within hours, because firewalls and antiviral software work by identifying the telltale signatures of known attacks. They are useless against anything completely new. But now engineers at Icosystem in Cambridge, US, have developed a program that can predict what is coming next by 'evolving' future hacker and virus attacks based on information from known ones. The idea would be to generate these novel attack strategies centrally, then remotely update the intrusion-detection software protecting PCs and networks around the world. This would allow them to recognise attack patterns before hackers have even developed them. The first version of the system is geared to predict hacking - though the technique is equally applicable to viruses. It works by mutating the scripts that hackers use to invade computers or which they plant on them for later activation. The result is artificially created hacking routines that security systems could be taught to recognise, allowing them to defend networks against previously unseen attacks. [New Scientist - January 25, 2004]
posted by Marcus Zillman |
5:05 AM
