Month: September 2022

AUTONOMOUS MALWARE. "Alife systems also differ in that they implement simulated environments where specific program behaviors are rewarded. While this setting is very different from the standard computer malware paradigm, computer virus researchers hinted at the idea of autonomously evolving malware already in the early 1990s." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

DEEMED UNLIKELY (TODAY). "Spafford performed an exhaustive review of computer viruses under the Artificial Life perspective confirming the absence of functional evolution in such programs. Although the possibility of an autonomously evolving virus—as the one discussed here—was mentioned, it was quickly dismissed as a task too daunting requiring a very large implementation, possibly larger than the OS itself." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

MALWARE MATINGS. "Malware has been spotted that evolves on its own, leeching onto other strains and multiplying its powers, without any human interaction." https://lnkd.in/dMWp2j5 View in LinkedIn

SIMPLE CONCEPT. "We argue here that apart from a hint and some failed implementation attempts (e.g., W32/Zellome), self-evolving malware has yet to appear. The concept itself, however, is relatively simple, and the consequences of the release of evolving malware should be studied." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

RAPID CHANGE IN 30 YEARS. "During the three decades of their existence, computer viruses have moved from simple replicators to advanced polymorphic and metamorphic implementations." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

INTACT FUNCTIONALITY. "Even for the most sophisticated metamorphic viruses, the specific functionality and overall behavior of the virus remain intact." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

MORE NEEDED. "Signature obfuscation, or as we will refer to it here as “cryptic variation”, will not allow for the discovery of new functionality. What true Darwinian evolution can accomplish is vastly different, because it is the process responsible for the de novo generation of all of the complexity of life." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

MALWARE INHERITABLE CHANGES. "While there are examples of functional variation that have occurred by chance (reviewed below in support of our hypothesis) there are no examples of computer malware that exhibits intentional functional change between generations. In the absence of functional variation, differential fitness will never be realized in computer viruses since the reproductive success of offspring remains unchanged." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL BIOCIDE. "In the event that a behavioral signature is developed for the virus, the entire population, including the cryptic variants, is affected equally. In this case, the functional/behavioral uniformity of the virus population would force all of it to extinction by the countermeasure." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE this weekend alone deals with the humorous but deadly serious Infinite Monkey Theorem. You know the one: given an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters, and infinite time, could they write (by accident) the works of the Bard? Nice image, with a stochastic heart. Rather like Fred Hoyle’s question of the improbability that whirlwind in a Boeing plane junkyard is able to assemble a new plane. View in LinkedIn