Cyber-Defense Tool Inspired by Ant Colonies
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers have developed DigitalAnts™, a cyber-defense tool inspired by ant colonies. Real ants use 'swarm intelligence' to identify areas of interest, laying down pheromone paths to attract other ants to the same areas. In DigitalAnts, sensor 'ants' constantly look for system operations that could indicate an attack, quickly alerting each computer's sentinel.
Transcript
00:00:03 i'm Glennfink a computer scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory we've developed an exciting new cyber defense approach called digital ants large shared computer networks need a secure defense system to protect against adversaries the way it works now all the cyber threat data are gathered from across the various organizations to a single point for analysis but it can
00:00:28 take days or weeks for the solutions to move back down to the members and by that time a cyber attack may have spread or changed we were inspired by ant colonies which use something called swarm intelligence when one ant comes upon something of interest like a food source it lays down scent patterns called pherommones these trails attract other ants from near and far who swarm
00:00:52 to the same food source we adapted this behavior for cyber defense sensor ants roam through all the computers in their designated areas they look for differences in system operations that could indicate an attack like high CPU use or unusual file system activity when an ant finds a symptom it leaves digital messages behind like real ants leave pherommones these trails attract more
00:01:17 and different kinds of sensor ants to suspected problems ants report their evidence to each computer's sentinel the Sentinel decides which actions to take possibly even alerting a human supervisor this approach is powerful for three reasons first digital ants can compare symptoms across all the computer operated equipment in the entire network of members second the ants are looking
00:01:42 for symptoms of change not static threat signatures or anomalies so they adapt to new or changing threats third ants do not have the ability to pick up or share data that reside on the network so there's no danger of ants revealing anything proprietary or secure to other users the ants do their work at attacker speed in fact ants have found evidence of computer viruses on a test network in
00:02:09 3 minutes now we're working with users to apply digital ants in their areas like a smart electrical grid and a virtual infrastructure for collaborative research we even anticipate healer ants that might automate the process of fixing damage caused by attackers others have taken notice too scientific American named digital ants in its 10 world
00:02:32 changing ideas of 2010 find out how an army of digital ants could go to work for you