Fighting viruses with ants

A distributed system for fighting virus infections.

Digital ants could soon be crawling through your computer’s hard drive, but don’t worry, they are there to help.

Scientists from Wake Forest University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have created an army of digital ants and their superior officers, digital sergeants and sentinels, to search out viruses, worms and other malware.

The new antivirus software could provide better protection while freeing up valuable hardware.

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The beauty of using digital ants, instead of a traditional anti-virus program, is their flexibility. Traditional anti-virus software usually scans constantly or on a set time schedule. Constantly scanning for threats is effective, but uses a lot of computer resources, resources that could be better spent doing something else.

Scanning at certain times, usually at night, optimizes computer usage, but it leaves a computer more vulnerable. Since the number of ants rises and falls with number of problems being detected, it can free up computer hardware to perform calculations when an attack isn’t happening. If at attack is happening, more ants can quickly be created to help deal with it.

via Digital ‘ants’ take on computer worms – Security- msnbc.com.

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