Good Network Worms Made Simple

grabbag writes "Dave Aitel is pitching new technology to create "nematodes," or beneficial network worms for use in large businesses. The idea is to set up a new language and structure to create "strictly controlled" good worms on the fly. A research-type demo was given as the Hack in the Box conference where Aitel talked about a world where "strictly controlled" nematodes are used by ISPs, government organizations and large companies to show significant cost savings."

Comments

distributed processing

[WiPEOUT]

Distributed processing capabilities and distributed network monitoring capabilities would be great, but who gets jurisdiction over what governments/companies are allowed to execute code on my PC?

Problem

[mysqlrocks]

Isn't the problem with most worms the network traffic it causes by spreading, not the payload? I'm not sure how they plan on keeping something that's designed to spread from spreading too quickly.

Wouldn't it be easier to fix things?

[photon317]

Rather than constructing a framework around the idea of building "beneficial" worms that work through the same exploits as real worms, and having to respond to security problems by passing around a disinfectant worm by the same (newly dicovered) vectors as the bad worms roaming your network, wouldn't it be a lot easier to fix the operating systems, networks, and the policies applied to them, such that you don't have a malicious worm problem to begin with?

Yes, but...

[aurb]

... will these worms produce Spice?

Beneficial worm??

[pesc]

So government worms can be beneficial? What government? The US? the Chinese?

"Beneficial" according to what point of view? Does the owner of the system get any say in this? If he does, why do we need a worm instead of a normal program that can be voluntarily installed?

If not, then this is just a normal malware worm with added propaganda and spin.

Fighting the Symptoms, Not the Problem

[RAMMS EIN]

This sounds to me like they're fighting the symptoms, not the problem. Worms can only spread successfully because of the sorry state of software security. If we fix that, we will not only get rid of worms, but also of other problems, such as targeted attacks for information theft. Using better languages to write software in can eliminate the bulk of security problems we're currently seeing. Security through diversity and not relying on known insecure software also help.

Obligatory simpsons quote

[HansF]

Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.