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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

TUMOR MUTATIONS. "Our latest release (v70; Aug 2014) describes 2,002,811 coding point mutations in over one million tumor samples and across most human genes. COSMIC also details more than six million noncoding mutations, 10,534 gene fusions, 61,299 genome rearrangements, 695,504 abnormal copy number segments and 60,119,787 abnormal expression variants." https://lnkd.in/dcuS5W2 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

PROGRAMMED MUTATION. "Somatic hypermutation involves a programmed process of mutation affecting the variable regions of immunoglobulin genes. Unlike germline mutation, SHM affects only an organism's individual immune cells, and the mutations are not transmitted to the organism's offspring." https://lnkd.in/dZFtBek View in LinkedIn

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

FRAGILE DIGITAL CODE. "In these systems, the code is implemented with small, well-defined instruction sets that are highly evolvable, that is, the probability that a mutation leads to another functional program is high (of the order of several to tens of percents). Most standard computer languages are not robust in this manner. For example, the x86 instruction set only tolerates very few mutations (on the order of fractions of a percent of the code." That applies to today. Not tomorrow. https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

DARWINIAN MALWARE. "More recent systems such as the Avida platform have established that Darwinian evolution of computer programs can be used to study evolutionary biology and genetics." Imagine if this was available to malware. https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

MALWARE AUTONOMY. "Each new malware instance retains the exact same core functionality as its ancestor and only alters the way it looks. What if, instead, malware were able to change its function or behavior autonomously? What if, in the absence of human intervention, computer viruses resembled biological viruses in their ability to adapt to new defense technologies as soon as they came into effect?" (2011). https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

CURRENT LIMITED FOCUS. "Malicious code development is still largely limited to code pattern changes utilizing polymorphic and metamorphic engines, as well as executable packer and wrapper technologies." https://lnkd.in/dGC6A7c View in LinkedIn

UNANTICIPATED MALWARE COMPLEXITY. "Computer experts brace for virus mutations...anti-virus experts said, has been scattered reports of new symptoms being detected among infected machines, a sign the bug may be more complex than first thought." (1999). https://lnkd.in/dWmig58 View in LinkedIn