New ideas for handling computer viruses are in the offing means vaccinations
But let’s go back first to the modus a virus spreads.
A virus spreads by infecting its host, reproducing itself and moving on firewalls and other sorts of anti-virus software computer programs. These programs search files for known viruses and monitor what is running for suspicious behavior. If a known virus is encountered, it can be stopped.
But new viruses are continuously created. As soon as a new virus is detected, a second line of defence would be to pass information about it between computers quickly, before they became infected
That is where the new idea is focusing on. The guys who work on it feel that like in a health system one virus can stop another one. The solution seems to be a kind of a vaccine program.
The idea includes the creation of attractiveness points, which attract viruses and are employed by anti-virus firms to pick new threats up quickly. These points within a network can be reached by any virus spreading through the network promptly. The points of attraction will then be linked to each other in a separate, overlying network that allowed only vaccines to pass across it.
This separate network is expected to act as a by- pass, enabling the vaccine to overtake the virus and reach uninfected computers first. A “honey pot” would automatically identify a new virus, extract its signature and pass the info to other points of attraction using the overlying net work. The information received in this way will then be shared with other computers. All network connected computers would then be able to recognize the new virus as dangerous, and refuse entry. The effectiveness of this strategy depends off course from the size of the to be created network.