Computer scientist Eran Shir of Tel Aviv University in Israel sees a lot of electronic epidemics that should not have happened: viruses that spread rapidly because computers have no way of knowing not to run malicious programs. His solution is to give computers the digital equivalent of the human immune system.
Shir notes that viruses typically propagate by sending themselves to addresses harvested from Outlook or other similar e-mail programs. He counters this strategy by seeding networks with "honeypot" computers, designed to draw out any active viruses. Each of these computers has a normal-looking e-mail address, but as soon as a virus activates its e-mail system, the computer records the virus's characteristics. It then sends other networked machines a description of the virus's code so that the other computers can block the virus, much as antibodies learn to stop real viruses.
This approach has a leg up on programs like ...
