Virus observation to make life easier...

[Rat]

Letting computer viruses loose on a quarantined computer and recording their pattern of activity could lead to a better way of spotting them in the "wild".

A prototype system developed at the University of Michigan uses the "fingerprint" of virus activity to identify them more effectively than existing anti-virus software.

The designers of programs that damage, take over or steal data from computers – called malware – are locked in an arms race with companies that make anti-virus (AV) software to prevent and fix malware damage.

Conventional AV software looks for suspicious behaviour and then tries to determine what’s causing it. It does this by looking for virus "signatures" – chunks of computer code from known viruses.

But identifying previously unknown malware is difficult, and keeping track of different variants of existing viruses makes it harder. For example, a virus called Agobot has split into more than 580 variants since its release in 2002.....

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[battye]

Anything to reduce viruses is good, hopefully this new method produces some positive results.