Matt Mahoney wrote:
--- "John G. Rose" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
What are the best current examples of (to any extent) self-building
software
?
So far, most of the effort has been concentrated on acquiring the
necessary
computing power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet
Just think of the orchestrative ability that is going on with this botnet.
This is an area that is underexploited especially in LEGALLY constructed
botnets.
It amazes me that a crime of this scale can go on for a year and we are
powerless to stop it either through law enforcement or technology. The Storm
botnet already controls enough computing power to simulate a neural network
the size of several human brains. Imagine if this computing power could be
used to rewrite itself using the same software skills needed to automatically
discover and exploit vulnerabilities in popular software. The trend is clear.
We are already losing control of our computers.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vulnerabilities.html
http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_90_day_vulnerability_report
http://www.cert.org/stats/fullstats.html
Are the hackers smart enough to control an evolutionary process whose fitness
function is the acquisition of computing resources?
I can answer this for you, because I was once an anti-virus developer,
so I have seen the internal code of more viruses than I care to think about.
The answer is NO. Malicious hackers are among the world's most stupid
programmers.
We used to joke that it would only take one hacker with the same
programming skills that *we* had to bring down every machine on the
planet. It was (and still is) a chilling thought.
Richard Loosemore.
-----
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