‘Friendly worms’ set to be the next big thing in anti-virus protection?
The technology is already in use as so-called ‘patching worms’, which are sometimes developed by virus-writers to try to stop the spread of worms deployed by their rivals. Legitimate users have been wary of unleashing patching worms because they are difficult to control, raising fears that the originator would be liable if one were to crash computers it was not designed to patch. "Even if your intentions are good you are altering the behaviour of someone's machine without their consent," Jose Nazario of the security firm Arbor Net, told New Scientist. Aitel claims to have overcome this problem by programming the beneficial worms to visit only computers on a particular network. The worms, which he calls ‘nematodes’, are programmed with a map of the network that tells them the range of IP addresses of all the machines they are allowed to invade. The first thing they do when they contact a potential beneficiary is to check whether the computer is in their range. If so they will invade; if not, they look for a new host. Alternatively, the nematodes can be programmed to ask a central server for permission to invade. To allow programmers with no worm-writing experience to assemble their own worm, Aitel has developed a programming language called Nematode Intermediate Language (NIL), which breaks a worm down into smaller software modules. He presented it at the recent Black Hat Briefings federal conference in Washington DC. The company hopes to start selling NIL modules within the next four years.
•Date: 3rd Feb 2006• Region: US/World • Type: Article •Topic: ISM |
