Abstract

Computer viruses are the first and only form of artificial life to have had a measurable impact on society. Currently, they are a relatively manageable nuisance. However, two alarming trends are likely to make computer viruses a much greater threat. First, the rate at which new viruses are being written is high, and accelerating. Second, the trend towards increasing interconnectivity and interoperability among computers will enable computer viruses and worms to spread much more rapidly than they do today. To address these problems, we have designed an immune system for computers and computer networks that takes much of its inspiration from nature. Like the vertebrate immune system, our system develops antibodies to previously unencountered computer viruses or worms and remembers them so as to recognize and respond to them more quickly in the future. We are careful to minimize the risk of an auto-immune response, in which the immune system mistakenly identifies legitimate software as being undesirable. We also employ nature's technique of fighting self-replication with self-replication which our theoretical studies have shown to be highly effective. Many components of the proposed immune system are already being used to automate computer virus analysis in our laboratory, and we anticipate that this technology will gradually be incorporated into IBM's commercial anti-virus product during the next year or two.

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