Ants suggest new approach to cybersecurity

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 29 September 2009 03:07

Business IT - Security

Computer scientists at a U.S. university are exploring whether computer systems can defend themselves the same way ant colonies do: by overwhelming attackers with swarms of defenders.

Ants respond to an attack on their nest through "swarming intelligence," whereby the group acts with overall purpose even though each member only has local knowledge.

Glenn Fink, a research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, wondered if the same approach would work for computer intruders such as worms and viruses, and recruited researchers at Wake Forest University in North Carolina to help him find out.

Wake Forest computer science professor Errin Fulp said, "Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat. As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants.

"Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection."

By dividing the task up that way, Fink and Fulp hope that the scans can be done quicker than the usual approach of having one program look for everything.

The team is also building in defenses against having the digital ants take over the computers themselves. Each machine in the network will have "sentinels" which will report to human-monitored "sergeants" who could shut down the colony at any time.