(October 28, 2009)
Researchers at Wake Forest University and the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory have developed an army of digital ants designed to help sniff
out malware. Each of the ants is designed to detect basic processes,
like connection rates or CPU utilization, and leave a digital pheromone
encouraging other ants to take a look if it senses an anomaly.
Suspicious activity is reported to a digital sentinel. If the sentinel
determines that something suspicious is really going on, it reports to
a digital sergeant which in turn alerts a human being. There are
different sorts of ants at the lowest levels; those that do not find
valuable information eventually die off, but those that do discover
important information are rewarded. If a certain type of ant proves
especially adept at detecting anomalies, then more ants of that type are
created. Researchers have so far created four of the 64 types of ants
they intend to develop.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/1...-computer.html
[Editor's Note (Schultz): This sounds like a giant breakthrough in the
war against malware. Regardless of whether or not it works as well as
these researchers believe, it shows that a distributed approach to
detecting and eradicating malware is the most promising one. Over the
years simply running anti-malware software on each host has not proven
very effective.]
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