Communications of the ACM
Project Gives Computers a More Powerful Way to Detect Threats
Credit: iStockPhoto.com
University of Texas (UT) at Dallas researchers have developed "space travel," a technique that automatically enables one computer in a virtual network to monitor another for intrusions, viruses, or other malicious programs.
The researchers say space travel bridges the gap between computer hardware and software systems. "Space travel might change the daily practice for many services offered virtually for cloud providers and data centers today, and as this technology becomes more popular in a few years, for the user at home on their desktops," says UT Dallas professor Zhiqiang Lin.
The researchers programmed space travel to use existing code to gather information in a computer's memory and automatically transfer it to a secure virtual machine. "Using this machine, then the user or antivirus software can understand what’s happening, with the space traveled computer setting off red flags if there is any intrusion," Lin says. The researchers say space travel also could help the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation determine what is happening inside a suspect's computer even if they are physically far away.
University of Michigan professor Peter Chen says the researchers "have developed an interesting way to take existing code from a trusted system and automatically use it to detect intrusions."
From UT Dallas News
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found