'Cybot' Development For Network Defense

lwbrown writes with this excerpt from Government Computer News about a concept being explored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory: "UNTAME is the product of a long-term program by the division's Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research Group to develop futuristic security functionality for increasingly large, complex environments. The cybots differ from traditional software agents in that they form a collective and are aware of the condition and activities of other cybots in the collective. 'You give it a mission and tools to work with, such as mobility and intrusion sensors, and it uses those tools and cooperates with other cybots to accomplish the mission," said Lawrence MacIntyre, one of the project's developers.'"

Comments

Re:But is the attitude right?

[Vectronic]

Like sperm?

Say it with me:

[Zerth]

"It isn't new just because you called it something different and put it on the network."

And what happens next?

[2muchcoffeeman]

The Cybots were created by man ... and they have a plan.

Re:At last, honest work for Virus writers

[palegray.net]

Pretty soon half the worlds available computing power will be involved in a power struggle with the other half.

Internal conflict in the budding Skynet? Cool.

complexity is the enemy of security ..

[viralMeme]

'You give it a mission and tools to work with, such as mobility and intrusion sensors, and it uses those tools and cooperates with other cybots to accomplish the mission"

Sounds like something to be targeted by a penetration tester. Imagine being able to deploy an army of software robots intelligent enough to cooperate with one another to inflitrate and hack the largest networks.